A series of columns published in The Times Colonist (Victoria BC) between May and July 2024

Dr. Trevor Hancock

Dr. Trevor Hancock is a retired professor and senior scholar at the University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy

thancock@uvic.ca

© Trevor Hancock, 2024

  • 26 May 2024 – Our ‘ignore-ant’ elites blindly adhere to ‘business as usual’
  • 2 June 2024 – Towards values fit for the 21st century (Published as “Ecosystems sustain societies that create economies”)
  • 16 June 2024 – Valuing our relationship with the Earth (Published as ‘We are deeply connected to and kin with all of life’)
  • 23 June 2024 – CAPE – Fighting for health and the planet for 30 years (Published as “Physician group fighting for health and planet marks 30 years”)
  • 30 June 2024 – Valuing our relationship with each other
  • 7 July 2024 – Putting the economy in its place (Published as “The economy should serve well-being, planet health, not dominate them”)
  • 14 July 2024 – We need to get our values and our priorities right
  • 21 July 2024 – How do we change core societal values? (Published as “Core-value change has to come from the grassroots”)

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The eight columns are below. But I used ChatGPT to produce both a Summary and an integrated 1,800-word Essay – partly as an experiment to see how it worked. I thought the results were good, so here they are.

Towards Values Fit for the 21st Century

Integrated Summary of eight columns by ChatGPT, January 2026

Dr. Trevor Hancock argues that the fundamental crises of our time — ecological degradation, social inequality, and economic instability — all stem from outdated and misaligned societal values that are unfit for life in the 21st century. He proposes a profound values shift grounded in a simple but powerful insight:

“Ecosystems sustain societies that create economies — it does not work the other way around.” (WWF, 2014)

1. The Current Value Problem

Our dominant worldview prioritizes:

  • Economic growth above all else,
  • Individualism and consumerism, and
  • Human domination over nature.

This value set drives decisions that harm ecosystems, undermine community wellbeing, and amplify inequality. Leaders in governments and corporations often reflect these priorities, resisting change because they benefit from the status quo.

2. A New Organizing Principle

Hancock uses the WWF’s Living Planet Report statement as a guiding “scripture” for reordering societal priorities:

  1. Ecosystems are primary — they make human society possible,
  2. Society emerges from ecosystems, and
  3. Economies are human-created systems that should serve society and the planet.

Today, these are inverted — economies are allowed to drive society, which in turn degrades ecosystems.

Core Values We Must Adopt

Hancock (drawing also on frameworks such as the Great Transition Initiative) suggests shifting toward:

Ecological Sensibility

  • Recognize that human life is embedded in and dependent on nature,
  • Treat ecosystems with reverence and care,
  • Acknowledge that nature has intrinsic value beyond human use.

Human Solidarity

  • Rebalance individual rights with shared responsibilities toward others and future generations,
  • Strengthen community bonds and collective wellbeing,
  • Value the common good over short-term self-interest.

Quality of Life Over Material Wealth

  • Measure progress through wellbeing indicators — happiness, health, equity — rather than GDP alone,
  • Encourage economic systems that provide sufficiency and dignity rather than endless growth and consumerism.

Reforming the Economy

Hancock emphasizes that the economy is not a “natural” force but a human construct. As such, it must be redesigned to:

  • Respect planetary limits (finite resources, ecological boundaries),
  • Be in service to society (not the other way around),
  • Promote wellbeing rather than unchecked consumption.

This may involve moving toward concepts like a steady-state economy and adopting alternative measures of progress such as Gross National Happiness or the Genuine Progress Indicator.

Changing Values in Practice

Hancock stresses that value change isn’t top-down — it must emerge from grassroots conversations and cultural evolution:

  • Conversations in families, schools, workplaces, and communities about the future we want,
  • Engagement by faith communities and civil society to explore shared ethical frameworks,
  • Recognition of rights — including potentially the rights of nature and future generations — as powerful tools for change.

Why This Matters

Without shifting values:

  • Ecosystems continue to degrade (we’ve already crossed several planetary boundaries),
  • Social bonds weaken and inequality grows,
  • Economic systems prioritize profit over people and planet.

Re-aligning what we value — from dominance to stewardship, from growth metrics to wellbeing metrics, and from individual gain to collective responsibility — is essential for a healthy, just, and sustainable future.

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Towards Values Fit for the 21st Century

Dr. Trevor Hancock

Integrated Essay from ChatGPT

The crises we face in the early decades of the 21st century are no longer discrete or isolated problems. Climate change, biodiversity loss, widening inequality, declining trust in institutions, and threats to democracy are not separate challenges that can be tackled one at a time. They are interlinked symptoms of a deeper malaise — a misalignment between the values that shape our societies and the realities of the world we now inhabit.

We live in what is increasingly described as a polycrisis: a convergence of ecological, social, economic, and political stresses that interact with and amplify one another. While technological innovation and policy reform are essential responses, they will be insufficient unless we confront the underlying values that drive our collective choices. The uncomfortable truth is that many of the values that served industrial societies in the 19th and 20th centuries are no longer fit for purpose in the 21st.

At its core, the challenge we face is not primarily technical or economic. It is ethical and cultural. It is about what we value, what we prioritise, and what kind of world we believe we are part of — and responsible for.

The Inversion at the Heart of Modern Society

A simple but profound insight helps illuminate the problem. As the World Wide Fund for Nature memorably puts it: Ecosystems sustain societies that create economies. This hierarchy reflects a basic ecological reality. Human societies depend entirely on healthy ecosystems for food, water, energy, materials, and climate stability. Economies, in turn, are human-made systems designed — or at least meant — to serve social needs.

Yet in practice, this relationship has been almost completely inverted. In contemporary societies, economies dominate social life, and ecosystems are treated as subordinate inputs — resources to be extracted, monetised, and consumed in the pursuit of growth. Decisions about land use, energy, housing, transportation, and even health are routinely justified in economic terms, while ecological and social consequences are framed as secondary concerns or “externalities.”

This inversion lies at the heart of our predicament. When economic growth becomes the overriding goal, regardless of its social or ecological costs, we should not be surprised that planetary boundaries are being breached, social cohesion is fraying, and inequalities are widening. The problem is not simply that the system is malfunctioning; it is functioning exactly as the values embedded within it instruct.

Outdated Values in a Changed World

Many of the dominant values shaping modern societies emerged during periods of relative ecological abundance and rapid industrial expansion. They include a belief in endless economic growth, a strong emphasis on individualism and competition, and an assumption that humans stand apart from — and above — the natural world.

These values were reinforced by powerful cultural narratives: that progress is synonymous with material accumulation; that markets are the most efficient arbiters of value; and that technological innovation can always overcome environmental limits. For a time, these beliefs appeared to be vindicated by rising living standards, longer lifespans, and unprecedented material wealth — at least for some.

But the world has changed. We now inhabit a planet where human activity has become a dominant geological force. We are breaching planetary boundaries related to climate stability, biodiversity, land use, freshwater systems, and biogeochemical cycles. At the same time, the social benefits of economic growth are increasingly uneven, with wealth concentrating in fewer hands while many experience precarity, insecurity, and declining wellbeing.

Persisting with values rooted in endless growth and human domination of nature in this context is not merely unrealistic; it is dangerous. Values that once seemed aspirational now drive behaviours that undermine the very foundations of human health and wellbeing.

Reframing Progress and Prosperity

One of the most consequential value shifts required in the 21st century concerns our understanding of progress. For decades, gross domestic product has served as the primary measure of societal success. Yet GDP measures economic activity, not wellbeing. It counts pollution clean-up, traffic accidents, and resource depletion as positives if they generate monetary transactions, while ignoring unpaid care, community cohesion, and ecological health.

If we value what we measure, then measuring the wrong things will inevitably lead us astray. A growing body of evidence shows that beyond a certain point, increases in material consumption do little to improve happiness or health, while often exacerbating environmental harm. Meanwhile, factors such as social connection, meaningful work, security, and a healthy environment play a far greater role in determining quality of life.

A values fit for the 21st century would place human and planetary wellbeing at the centre of our understanding of prosperity. This does not mean rejecting economic activity, but re-situating it as a means rather than an end. Economies should be designed to meet human needs within ecological limits, not to maximise consumption or profit for its own sake.

Alternative measures of progress — from wellbeing indices to genuine progress indicators — offer glimpses of how such a shift might be operationalised. But ultimately, the deeper change is cultural: a move from “more” to “enough,” from accumulation to sufficiency, and from competition to care.

From Individualism to Solidarity

Another defining feature of dominant modern values is a strong emphasis on individualism. Individual rights, freedoms, and autonomy are rightly cherished achievements of modern societies. Yet when taken to extremes, individualism can erode the sense of shared responsibility that complex, interdependent societies require.

The challenges we face — climate change, pandemics, social inequality — cannot be solved by individuals acting alone. They require collective action, mutual trust, and a willingness to act for the common good, including the wellbeing of future generations. A values framework that privileges personal gain over collective responsibility is ill-suited to such tasks.

Values fit for the 21st century must therefore rebalance rights with responsibilities, and autonomy with solidarity. This does not mean suppressing individuality, but recognising that individual flourishing is inseparable from social and ecological conditions. Health, in its fullest sense, is a collective achievement.

Public health has long understood this reality. Clean water, safe housing, education, and social inclusion are not matters of individual choice alone; they are the products of shared systems and shared commitments. Extending this logic to planetary health makes clear that caring for the ecosystems that sustain us is a collective ethical obligation, not a lifestyle preference.

Reclaiming Our Place in Nature

Perhaps the most profound value shift required is a redefinition of humanity’s relationship with the natural world. The dominant worldview of modern industrial societies positions humans as separate from nature — managers, owners, or exploiters of a passive environment. This perspective has enabled extraordinary technological achievements, but at a devastating ecological cost.

Ecological science tells a very different story. Humans are embedded within complex living systems upon which we depend for survival. Our health is inseparable from the health of soils, forests, oceans, and climate systems. Recognising this interdependence requires not just new policies, but a different way of seeing ourselves.

Values fit for the 21st century would acknowledge the intrinsic value of nature, not merely its instrumental usefulness to humans. This perspective is reflected in emerging movements to recognise the rights of nature and to grant legal standing to ecosystems. Such approaches challenge deeply ingrained assumptions about ownership and control, but they also open the door to more respectful and sustainable forms of coexistence.

Indigenous worldviews, long marginalised by colonial and industrial paradigms, offer important insights here. Many emphasise relationality, reciprocity, and responsibility to future generations — values that resonate strongly with the needs of our time. Learning from these perspectives does not mean romanticising the past, but recognising that modern societies have much to gain from alternative ways of understanding human–nature relationships.

Power, Resistance, and the Difficulty of Change

If the need for new values is so clear, why is change so slow? One reason lies in the distribution of power. Existing economic and political systems benefit those who profit from the status quo. Values that justify endless growth, resource extraction, and inequality are not neutral; they serve specific interests.

Challenging these values therefore inevitably provokes resistance. Calls for ecological limits are framed as threats to prosperity. Efforts to prioritise wellbeing over growth are dismissed as naïve or unrealistic. Yet clinging to outdated values in the face of mounting evidence is itself a form of denial.

History suggests that major value shifts rarely occur overnight or by decree. They emerge through sustained cultural change, driven by social movements, public dialogue, and lived experience. The abolition of slavery, the expansion of women’s rights, and the recognition of civil rights were all preceded by long periods of moral contestation in which prevailing values were challenged and redefined.

Today, similar processes are underway. Youth climate movements, wellbeing economy initiatives, and planetary health frameworks all reflect an emerging recognition that “business as usual” is no longer viable. While these movements may appear fragmented, they share a common impulse: to realign societal values with the realities of a finite planet and a shared human future.

The Role of Conversation and Culture

Changing values is not primarily a matter of policy, though policy can reinforce or undermine values. It is a cultural process that unfolds through conversation, storytelling, education, and example. Families, schools, faith communities, workplaces, and local organisations all play a role in shaping what is considered normal, desirable, and acceptable.

Asking different questions is a powerful starting point. Instead of “How do we grow the economy?” we might ask, “How do we ensure everyone can live a good life within planetary limits?” Instead of “What will this cost?” we might ask, “What will this mean for health, equity, and future generations?”

Such questions invite a broader understanding of value — one that encompasses care, connection, and stewardship. They also make visible the ethical dimensions of decisions that are too often framed as purely technical or economic.

Towards a Wellbeing Society

Ultimately, values fit for the 21st century point towards the idea of a wellbeing society — one in which the primary purpose of social, economic, and political systems is to enable people and communities to thrive, now and into the future, while respecting the ecological systems that sustain life.

This vision does not promise a world without conflict or difficulty. It does, however, offer a coherent framework for navigating the challenges ahead. By reordering our priorities — placing ecosystems first, society second, and the economy in service to both — we can begin to address the root causes of the polycrisis rather than merely its symptoms.

The task before us is daunting, but not unprecedented. Human societies have repeatedly demonstrated the capacity to rethink their values in response to changing conditions. The question is not whether we can change, but whether we will do so in time.

Values are not abstract ideals; they are lived commitments, expressed in daily choices and collective decisions. To cultivate values fit for the 21st century is to take responsibility for the world we are shaping — and the one we will leave behind.

The eight original columns

Our ‘ignore-ant’ elites blindly adhere to ‘business as usual’

Many of our so-called leaders don’t want to change because they get so much benefit — wealth, power, status — from the way things are

26 May 2024

My colleague Paul Kershaw is a Professor of Public Health at UBC and founder of Generation Squeeze, a “Think and Change Tank” that promotes wellbeing for all generations. It does so “by turning evidence into action and rejuvenating democracy to protect what is sacred for younger and future generations: a healthy childhood, home and planet.” He has been very effective in raising issues of concern and getting public policy changed.

Recently we have been discussing the content of a session we are planning on planetary health and a wellbeing society at the Victoria Forum this August. In the process of that discussion, Paul wrote:

“I doubt we need a session that makes the case we have crossed planetary boundaries, or that wellbeing frameworks matter, or that Indigenous knowledge is critical to thinking sustainably over generations.” 

A reasonable point; one would like to think these issues are already well understood, at least in principle. But he then made the case that – sadly – we do indeed need such a session, by adding: “Except that the governments and corporations that drive our economies and societies are not behaving as if they have heard or understand this.”

Now this is from someone who is well steeped in public policy and well connected to the policy-making process and to policy-makers. So when he says that our government and corporate leadership is not paying attention to these important issues, it worries me.

What they are not hearing or understanding is really very simple: We only have one planet, and its natural ecosystems are the source of all life – not just humanity but every single living thing. And yet our demands considerably exceed the biocapacity and resources of the Earth.

We behave as if we have and can use the resources of several planets. Indeed, the more bizarrely delusional of us actually seem to believe we can and should move to another planet – presumably so we can repeat the process there!

But back here on Earth, where we actually live, we have crossed six of nine suggested planetary boundaries and are approaching two others, one of which is climate change.

Now it’s hard to believe that governments and corporations are not hearing or understanding this; indeed, I am sure they are. But what Paul is saying is that they are not behaving as if they have heard or understood what is going on. They are practising what Elizabeth Ellsworth, in a 1997 book, called ‘ignore-ance’ – “an active dynamic of negation, an active refusal of information”.

I can imagine several reasons that lead to this inability to face reality and act accordingly. In responding to Paul I suggested possible reasons for this ignore-ance: It may be that many of our leaders – and indeed many people in general – don’t believe it is really that bad, or can’t easily face the implications. Or perhaps people believe that somehow someone, somewhere, will come up with a technological fix that will allow us to carry on much as we are.

But I suspect that for many of our so-called leaders, they don’t want to change because they get so much benefit – wealth, power, status – from the way things are. And therein lies the nub of our problem; self-interested blind adherence to ‘business as usual’, to an economic system and underlying core values that plainly work against our long-term interests.

The result is an inability or unwillingness to play a leadership role in the massive and rapid transformation needed to stave off ecological decline, even collapse. And when ecosystems decline or collapse, so too do the communities and societies embedded within them, and the economies they create.

As the old adage has it, if you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem. And since this government and corporate elite has shown itself unwilling to or incapable of addressing the problem, it clearly IS the problem.

But it is not just the behaviour of our elites, the problem is more profound than that. They are merely reflecting and acting upon a set of deep cultural values that are unfit for purpose in the 21st century, as I start to discuss next week.

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Towards values fit for the 21st century

  • Published as “Ecosystems sustain societies that create economies”

It’s is a simple prescription, but in practice, we try to make it work the other way around

2 June 2024

Last week I suggested that the bad decisions that government and corporate leaders are making, in the face of growing evidence of ecological decline and potential collapse, are rooted in a set of societal values that are unfit for purpose in the 21st century.

Back in April I was asked to be the homilist at the First Unitarian Church just before Earth Day and to talk about the values revolution that is needed. Now I don’t know about you, but I didn’t even know there was such a a beast as a homilist, and only a vague sense of what a homily is. So I looked it up. A homily, I found, is “a commentary that follows a reading of scripture, giving the ‘public explanation of a sacred doctrine’ or text.”

Clearly I needed a piece of scripture on which to base my homily. But not being a theist, I had no sacred text to turn to. So I looked to a piece of wisdom that might be considered scripture – a word that means “sacred writings”; it certainly is scripture for me: “Ecosystems sustain societies that create economies. It does not work the other way around.”

The source is the 2014 edition of the bi-annual Living Planet report from the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF). This simple piece of scripture contains a great deal of wisdom that is relevant to our modern conundrum, and underscores the need for a values revolution.

Indeed, it is a simple but profound prescription for how we should organise our societies, communities and economies. But in practice, driven by a set of distorted values, we try to make it work the other way around. As a result we live in a world where economies shape and distort societies that then damage or destroy ecosystems – to the detriment not only of our health and wellbeing, but that of a myriad other species with whom we share this one small planet.

There are four elements in the WWF ‘scripture’ that I want to explore with respect to the values we currently exhibit and how they need to change. They are the three realms of the Earth (ecosystems), society and the economy, and how we prioritise among them.

These three realms are congruent with what the Great Transition Initiative calls “the conventional triad of individualism, consumerism, and domination of nature” that lies at the root of our current global and local crises.

The Great Transition Initiative is focused on a deep transformation of culture and society and proposes that in opposition to the conventional – and mis-aligned – triad of values noted above – individualism, consumerism, and domination of nature –  we need to develop “a constellation of values – human solidarity, quality of life, and ecological sensibility” that will get us to the future we need.

Let’s start with the realm of the Earth and its ecosystems. As the WWF makes clear, ecosystems – and more broadly, the Earth – contains everything else. Every human we know of, except for the 10 currently on the International Space Station, lives on Earth – all  8+ billion of us. Every human there has ever been, and every member of every species there is or has ever been, lives or lived on Earth.

This one tiny blue dot contains all the life of the universe, as far as we know at present, and it is the basis of our very existence.

So you would think we would treat the Earth with great reverence, respect and care. But we know we don’t. Ever seen a clearcut? A polluted river? A burned forest? A destoyed reef? A tarsands mine? A tailings pond? An oceanic plastics gyre? Cities and the lands that surround them covered in air pollution?

We are in deep, deep trouble. We have already crossed six of nine planetary boundaries and are approaching two of the remaining three. In the process we have triggered a sixth ‘Great Extinction’.

All this stems from an unfit set of values rooted in a mistaken belief that we are separate from and indeed superior to nature, and can manipulate and manage nature for the benefit of our societies and our economies. I will discuss this further over the coming weeks.

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Valuing our relationship with the Earth

  • Published as  ‘We are deeply connected to and kin with all of life’

We need a reverence for the Earth and all it contains, an awareness of a connection to nature that is, at its heart, spiritual.

16 June 2024

Two weeks ago, I ended my column on values fit for the 21st century by stating that we have a set of values that are not fit for purpose today. One of those unfit value sets relates to our relationship with nature, which is rooted in a sense that we are separate from and indeed superior to nature. We believe we can manipulate and manage nature for the benefit of our societies and our economies.

In a very real sense we are indeed separated from nature. In North America we are 80 percent urbanised and we spend 90 percent of our time indoors – and a further 5 percent in cars and other vehicles. So we – and especially our children – have very little contact with nature, and most of that is a constrained form of nature in an urban setting.

Moreover, in economic terms we discount nature. A forest has no economic value until it is cut down and turned into lumber or paper. The pollution of air, water and land, especially well away from us, is considered an externality, not factored into our economic models and measures, “for no better reason”, wrote the late Herman Daly, a leading proponent of an economics of wellbeing, “than because we have made no provision for them in our economic models.” 


But this set of values is incompatible with our survival. So the first of four sets of value transformations I propose is the need to (re)establish a sense of reverence for the Earth and all it contains, an awareness of a connection to nature that is both rooted in ecological reality and is, at its heart, spiritual.

Duwamish Chief Seattle reportedly said almost two centuries ago, “we are part of the great web of life, and whatever we do to the web of life, we do to ourselves”. We need to recognize that simple fact and acknowledge that ecosystems and the species they contain have intrinsic worth, that nature has rights, that other species have rights, and we owe them justice.

All of this has enormous resonance with long-held Indigenous world views and traditional teachings. I was powerfully struck by this point from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s final report in 2015:

“Reconciliation between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Canadians, from an Aboriginal perspective, also requires reconciliation with the natural world. If human beings resolve problems between themselves but continue to destroy the natural world, then reconciliation remains incomplete.

This is a perspective that we as Commissioners have repeatedly heard: that reconciliation will never occur unless we are also reconciled with the earth.”

I am also moved by the oft-heard concept among Indigenous people of ‘all our relations’ – that we are deeply connected to and kin with all of life – something modern DNA studies show to be true to a remarkable degree.

Now I am not Indigenous, but I am a member of a Global Working Group of the International Union of Health Promotion and Education (IUHPE) that is Indigenous-led and focused on what Indigenous perspectives and spirituality bring to our understanding of planetary health – the health of human civilizations and the natural systems that support them.

We just authored for IUHPE a Position Statement on Planetary Health Promotion and Indigenous World Views and Knowledges. In it we stated:

“Viewing humanity as deeply connected with the environment is a central element of Indigenous knowledge systems. This interdependence is not a romanticized version of the environment, but one that is perceived through a worldview that our health is tied to the health of the planet. We cannot separate human and ecosystem wellbeing in this interconnected paradigm.”

We also explicitly connected Indigenous world views and knowledges with spiritual approaches:

“Spirituality is another facet of human life that offers pathways to re-engage with humanity’s deep connection with the natural world, and to foster environmental awareness, activism and wellbeing in ways that can enhance both health promotion and planetary health.”

Whether we approach the issue of a reverence for nature through ecological science, Indigenous values or spirituality does not matter. The point is to see ourselves in context, and with humility, as just one small part of the global ecosystem that sustains us, and all of life.

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Valuing our relationship with each other

We need a re-awakening of our sense of kinship with and shared responsibility for our fellow humans, of a sense of community

30 June 2024

I am exploring my ‘scriptural text’ from the Word Wide Fund for Nature’s 2014 Living Planet Report that was the basis of my homily for the First Unitarian Church back in April. The report stated: “Ecosystems sustain societies that create economies. It does not work the other way around.”

Many of our problems, I believe, stem from a mis-aligned set of values that are unfit for the 21st century challenges we face. Those values relate to the three realms included in my chosen text: The Earth (ecosystems), society and the economy, and how we prioritise among them. Two weeks ago I discussed our need to develop a reverence for the Earth and all it contains, an awareness of a connection to nature that is, at its heart, spiritual.

The second realm from my bit of scripture is society, and thus about our relationship with each other. In recent decades, we have seen society and community de-valued and undermined by a radical neo-liberal philosophy that prioritises the individual over society and community; promotes the pursuit of self-interest and greed over the common interest, which it devalues; worships profit and wealth above all else; and sees government as a problem that gets in the way of private wealth accumulation.

I was born in 1948, the same year that the National Health Service was established in the UK. The years that followed, the years in which I grew up and went to medical school, were a time of public investment in housing, education and social welfare. But with the advent of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan and the triumph of neo-liberal values, much of that has been torn down.

In the pursuit of lower taxes, smaller government and increased private wealth, we have abandoned social housing and cut back on education funding (ask yourself why schools are scrambling to fund arts and music, why university departments of humanities are struggling to survive?). We have reduced unionisation, kept wages and social welfare low and pared back on benefits. Among other things we have seen the re-appearance of food banks and homeless encampments. Is the average person better off for these changes?

On top of all that, we have become a much more atomised, alienated and lonely society; in fact, loneliness is now recognised as a significant and growing public health problem! This is not only because of the emphasis on individual responsibility (which absolves the government and the corporations of responsibility), but also because of the insidious impact of what I have started to call the ‘anti-social media’ that have come to dominate so much of our lives.

Yet humans are perhaps above all else a social species. So the second set of transformed values I propose is the need for what the Great Transition Initiative calls ‘solidarity’, a re-awakening of our sense of kinship with and shared responsibility for our fellow humans, of a sense of community.

We need to value society and community, not necessarily above the individual but equally, seeking a better balance between individual and shared rights and responsibilities. Related to this, we need to value the common good – including in particular the common good of future generations – over the pursuit of short-term self-interest at the expense of others.

A recent letter to this newspaper from David Conway expressed the same point at the national and international level. He was objecting to what is in essence a very whiny and selfish view; that Canada is so small that what we do does not matter – so let’s keep on expanding fossil fuels, driving big cars and so on. “I still believe that taking individual responsibility for doing my bit to shoulder the load is the right thing to do”, he wrote. And he challenged us: “do we still believe the same goes for our national responsibility to make the world a safer and more stable place?”

Moreover, as part of valuing our relationships with each other, we need to recognise the role of government as an agent for the common good, and particularly see its role to protect and promote interests of the disadvantaged and the vulnerable, both in Canada and around the world, now and into the future.

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Putting the economy in its place

  • Published as “The economy should serve well-being, planet health, not dominate them”

The economy is not a natural phenomenon, it is a human construct, so if it doesn’t work for us we should change it. We need to ensure the economy is subservient to, not dominant over, societal wellbeing and planetary health.

7 July 2024

In exploring the need for a transformation of our values so they are fit for purpose in the 21st century I have been using a piece of ‘scripture’ from the World Wide Fund for Nature’s 2014 Living Planet Report.

The third realm from my piece of ‘scripture’ is the economy, and the text makes an important but often over-looked point: Societies create economies. The economy is not a natural phenomenon, it is a human construct, so if it doesn’t work for us we should change it.

Well, this economy does not work for us. The Institute for Health Improvement, rooting its idea in systems engineering, states: “Every system is perfectly designed to achieve the results it gets”. Our current economic system seems perfectly designed to damage and destroy the Earth’s natural systems while undermining society and heightening inequality.

At the heart of this problem are a set of values that prize money, wealth, greed, profit and ‘stuff’ above planetary health and societal and human wellbeing; that is opposed to paying taxes on principle; that covets and accumulates power by heightening inequality, and that adheres to the absurd notion of indefinite growth. 

Disastrously, the only wealth that is really valued is economic wealth, be it money or ‘stuff’. As I noted in an earlier column, natural capital is not included in most economic models, nor for that matter are human or social capital. The latter, by the way, is distinguished from human capital because human capital is all about the ‘wealth’ of an individual – their level of education, creativity, health, sense of compassion etc – while social capital is all about the extent and strength of our relationships with each other – the realm of community and society.

But in the 21st century we have to value all these forms of wealth, which means we need at the very least to reform capitalism so it integrates all these forms of capital. Real capitalists increase all forms of capital at the same time, and they most certainly do not deplete natural, social or human capital just so they can increase economic capital – that is false capitalism.

Turning to taxes, nobody said it better than US Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes a century or so ago: “Taxes are the price we pay for a civilised society”. So if you have a nagging feeling that society is less civilised than it used to be – and a society with the levels of hunger and homelessness we see today can hardly be called civilised – then there is your answer.

When it comes to the issue of continuous economic growth, Kenneth Boulding, a former President of both the American Economic Association and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, told the U.S. Congress as far back as 1973: “Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.”

So the third set of value transformations we need has to do with the economy, which must a) be consistent with the reality of the finite and limited Earth on which we live, and b) be in service to society, thus creating the conditions that enable wellbeing for all, both now and for future generations.

Among other things, that means abandoning the absurd and impossible dream – actually, the nightmare – of perpetual and exponential growth, in favour of a steady state economy. That will mean valuing sufficiency rather than affluence and excess: As the late Herman Daly wrote, “Enough should be the central concept in economics,” where enough means “sufficient for a good life”.

We also need to find new and better ways to value progress. The GDP was never intended as a measure of social welfare, and it is profoundly misleading, since it includes many unhealthy and indeed harmful costs, such as the costs of cleaning up after disasters or all the money spent on tobacco as well as the costs of treating tobacco-related diseases.

Alternatives include the Genuine Progress Indicator, Gross National Happiness, as pioneered by Bhutan, and here in Canada, the Canadian Index of Wellbeing. But above all else, the economy must be put in its place – subservient to, not dominant over, societal wellbeing and planetary health.

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We need to get our values and our priorities right

If we want government and corporate leaders to change their values, we need to change ours

14 July 2024

As I near the end of my series of columns on values fit for the 21st century, I return to my May 26th column, in which I took our government and corporate leaders to task for reflecting and embracing a set of neoliberal values that are incompatible with planetary health and societal wellbeing in the 21st century.

Their self-interested blind adherence to ‘business as usual’, I wrote, to an economic system and underlying core values that plainly work against our long-term interests, is because they get so much benefit – wealth, power, status – from the way things are. But while I think they need to change their values, I do not believe that this can happen if society itself does not change its values.

After all, while we may call them ‘leaders’, in many ways they are simply followers. An old adage in politics, after all, is not to get too far out ahead of the parade, and to always look back and make sure it is still following you.

At the same time, though, while keen to go along with what the society itself values, they are trying to shape societal values to match their own and their party’s ideologies, trying to persuade people it is in their best interest.

Meanwhile, corporate leaders are interested in promoting their products and selling more of everything so they can grow their profits and their power. So they too are trying to shape societal values to match their own and their corporation’s ideologies, trying to persuade people it is in their best interest.

As a result, the whole, society – aided and abetted by those ‘leaders’ – goes along with the mis-aligned set of values that are at the root of our ecological, social and economic crises: A lack of connection to and reverence for the Earth, the valuing of individualism at the expense of society, the derogation of government and of regulation and taxation, the valuing of a narrow concept of wealth and the continual growth of an economic system that harms the Earth and many humans.

So the fourth set of values that have to be transformed relates to an explicit set of priorities embodied in the World Wide Fund for Nature’s (WWF) piece of ‘scripture’ that was the basis of my April homily at the First Unitarian Church: “Ecosystems sustain societies that create economies. It does not work the other way around.”

The sad truth is, however, that we try to make it work the other way around. By prioritising the economy, we allow it to distort society and harm the Earth’s natural systems that are the ultimate determinant of our health. In the set of dominant values today, it is clear that the economy usually comes first.

We see the Finance Minister and the budget dominating much of government and the news. We hear economics correspondents talking a lot about the GDP and whether it is growing or shrinking. We are fed business and economic data on a daily, even an hourly basis.

It is only recently – thanks to the intitative of Professor Rick Kool at Royal Roads University – and only on CBC’s ‘On the Island’ radio show, as far as I know – that the daily CO2 levels are also reported.

But nobody is giving us indicators of  the state of our local and global ecosystems, which  are largely excluded from the reckoning of our economic systems. And we certainly are not given the happiness or quality of life index or the wellbeing numbers on a daily, weekly or even monthly basis.

So what is it we actually value? Should money really take precedence over wellbeing for all and planetary health? Is that the sort of society we want for our children and grandchildren, and for future generations all over the world? I hope not, for their sake.

We need a conversation, in this region, across Canada and indeed around the world, about the WWF’s seemingly simple but profound statement, about the values that are incompatible with this simple worldview, and an exploration of the values that are compatible with “a planetary civilization rooted in solidarity, sustainability, and human well-being”, as the Global Scenario Group put it.

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How do we change core societal values?

  • Published as “Core-value change has to come from the grassroots”

Rights-based arguments such as those used to fight the tobacco industry could be a powerful tool — including the rights of future generations to a healthy environment

21 July 2024

It is said that every system is perfectly designed to achieve the results it gets. If so, then our current system seems perfectly designed to push us beyond planetary boundaries in a variety of Earth systems, while creating widespread and worsening inequality. This presents a massive threat to the wellbeing of current and future generations.

For the past few weeks I have been exploring the underlying core values that drive many of our systems, institutions and choices. When I look at the state of the world today, and in particular our relationship with nature and with each other,  it is clear we are being driven by a set of core values that are not fit for purpose in the 21st century. And I have suggested a set of core values that are compatible with ensuring a healthy, just and sustainable future for all, while protecting and restoring the planet’s vital systems.

All well and good, but how do we bring about these massive and rapid value shifts? How do we, as the late Will Steffen put it, reach social tipping points before we reach ecological ones? One thing for sure, there isn’t an app for that! But I do have some thoughts.

I spent a chunk of my time in the early 1980s in the fight against the tobacco industry. The social tipping point for smoking came when smoking came to be seen as an abuse of the rights of non-smokers. So using rights-based arguments could be powerful. There have been calls for the recognition of the right to a healthy environment. Indeed, B.C.’s own David Boyd, as UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and the environment, championed this through the UN, with the General Assembly recognising in 2022 that a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment is a human right.

Then there are the rights of future generations to a healthy environment. Several court cases around the world have successfully argued that case with respect to government failures to slow or stop greenhouse gas emissions, while the Welsh National Assembly passed a Wellbeing of Future Generations Act and created a Commissioner to oversee it.

Beyond that, we need to consider the right of nature and of other species to exist. A number of countries around the world have recognised land and water systems as persons (e.g. the Whanganui River and Te Urewera in Aotearoa New Zealand); after all, if corporations can be considered persons, why not the much more obviously alive ecosystems?

Related to all this is the need to expand the powerful set of values concerning social justice to include inter-generational, inter-communal and inter-species justice. The 1987 Brundtland report on sustainable development stated we should “meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

But when we deplete a resource, poison an ecosystem or create long-term change in vital Earth systems, we are acting in an unjust manner towards other people and places, future generations and other species.  

But core value change cannot be imposed from above, it has to come from the grassroots. Earth For All, about which I wrote a series of columns between October 2022 and September 2023, was clear on what is needed: “fresh conversations in every home, every school, every university, every city, every parliament. What is the future we want? How can our operating system get us there?” And, I would add, what we value and what our values should be.

Because the root of this series of columns on values was my homily at the First Unitarian Church, I want to end with specific reference to the role of faith communities. After all, faith communities are all about values, about our relationship with ‘creation’, however that is understood, and about community, the very things I have been writing about.

They can play an important role in initiating and leading explorations and discussions about the  new ethical frameworks for society that reflect the constellation of values – human solidarity, quality of life, and ecological sensibility, as The Great Transition Initiative puts it – that we need.

Such work is essential if we are to achieve the great turnaround in societal values we need, locally and globally.