Almost everyone on Earth lives within a capitalist economy – of one kind or another. But does that make us all ‘capitalists’? Those who still want to root out capitalism, lock, stock and barrel, have a clear answer to that question: No. Those who work in business or the City have an equally clear answer: Yes. But many of us just muddle along: capitalists by default, as it were, rather than by conviction.

But ‘muddling along’ doesn’t look so smart these days. Muddling along has given us accelerating climate change, the war on international terrorism, worsening gaps between rich and poor, collapsing eco-systems, oil at over $100 a barrel, and now, on top of it all, the prospect of deep economic recession as a global system built on debt, credit and profligate consumption starts to crack apart. We may have seen off the Communists (and indeed every other alternative to capitalism), but it’s not exactly turning out the way we would have wanted.

And that, in a nutshell, is our dilemma: capitalism really has become ‘the only show in town’, but the variant of capitalism that currently dominates the world is rapidly turning that show into an out-and-out horror story. This is a personal dilemma, for each and everyone of us, as we both benefit from and contribute to this particular variety of scorched-earth capitalism. And it is an organisational dilemma, as the organisations we work for struggle to succeed within an inherently unsustainable system without screwing it up for everyone else.

Forum for the Future lives out those dilemmas every day, working as we do with some of the world’s largest multi-national companies, and with a host of public sector organisations seeking to reconcile today’s conflicting imperatives whilst improving the quality of public sector services. That’s our daily reality, and the way we see it, most environmentalists are still very reluctant to engage in addressing these dilemmas at a systems level – in other words, not focusing solely on the symptoms of today’s converging crises, but addressing the root causes inherent within this particular version of capitalism

But is this so surprising? If the vast majority of people continue to live lives that depend upon systematic denial, and if all our political leaders (and the media that feed off them and on them) are strenuously promoting such denial, it seems to me to be something of a miracle that there are still so many people who have so steadfastly resisted co-option into this unherently unsustainable system until now.

3 Scenarios to reflect on

Working inside the system, I can’t help but notice how risk averse the vast majority of politicians and business leaders remain. It appears that there is just not enough appeal in any more radical alternatives for them to get stuck into. The risks are too high, the potential benefits too speculative. Denial is an infinitely easier choice than commercial or political damnation.

That uncomfortable “realpolitik” has led me to see the future in terms of just three scenarios. Firstly, there’s what I call the “phoenix fantasy”. In this view of the future, our societies fail to act fast enough to ward off today’s impending environmental and social crises, duly collapse under the combined shock of these impacts, but then somehow “get it all together” in the light of this catastrophic shock to build a new world based on elegant, enlightened, self-reliant sustainability. I describe this as a ‘fantasy’ because that’s what I think it is.

My second scenario (“all your worst fears plus a few”) follows the same path but without the phoenix. Devastation follows collapse. The trajectory of the kind of civilisation that has emerged since the start of the Industrial Revolution is abruptly terminated.

“Capitalism As If The World Matters” is all about a third scenario: first reforming, and then transforming today’s particularly perverse manifestation of capitalism. Sounds boring by comparison, doesn’t it? But if (like me) you’ve thought long and hard about the odds on Scenario 1 and have come (however reluctantly) to the conclusion that it’s just a childish fantasy, then the pursuit of Scenario 3 is the only place left to go.

It’s not because I despair of human nature that I’ve rejected Scenario 1. I abhor that particular worldview that tells us that we’ve got the economic system we’ve got because it’s the one that most powerfully reflects our true human nature: greedy, aggressive, self-interested, short-termist, irresponsible and cruel. In other words, that’s the way we are because evolution made us that way, and those characteristics are unalterably encoded in our genes. But it would be foolish to assume automatically that “the better side” of human nature will somehow win out, especially in a world where the cumulative shocks of accelerating climate change are compounded by rapidly declining stocks of oil and gas.

People are understandably reluctant to explore things in terms of these ‘meltdown scenarios’. Even Scenario 3 brings with it some interesting ‘positioning challenges’ for an educational charity like ours. Change will not come about by threatening people with yet more ecological doom and gloom. The changes we have to make have also to be seen as desirable changes, good for people, their health, their quality of life – and not just good for the prospects of future generations. This is a “here and now” agenda, as well as an agenda for tomorrow.

That means working with the grain of markets and free choice, not against it. It means embracing capitalism as the only over-arching system capable of achieving any kind of reconciliation between ecological sustainability on the one hand and the pursuit of prosperity and personal wellbeing on the other.

That said, today’s particular model of capitalism is clearly incapable of delivering that kind of reconciliation, dependent as it is on the accelerating liquidation of the natural capital on which we depend, and on exacerbating divides between the rich and the poor the world over. And that means we have to talk as much about the values that underpin the alternatives we’re proposing as about ‘the business case’ that still makes it so much sounder an option than what we have today.

So, what is sustainable development?

At its heart, therefore, sustainable development comes right down to one all–important challenge: is it possible to conceptualise and then operationalise an alternative model of capitalism - one that allows for the sustainable management of all the different capital assets we rely on, so that the yield from those different assets sustains us now as well as in the future? And to do it in a way that lifts people’s spirits as to the real potential of humankind rather than assumes the worst?

The case for sustainable development must be reframed if that is to happen. It must be as much about new opportunities for responsible wealth creation as about outlawing irresponsible wealth creation. And it must draw on a core of ideas and values that speaks directly to people’s desire for a higher quality of life, emphasising enlightened self-interest and personal wellbeing of a different kind.

It is only this combination (sustainable development seen as answering the unavoidable challenge of living within natural limits, providing unprecedented opportunities for responsible and innovative wealth creators, and offering people a more balanced and more rewarding way of life) which is likely to provide any serious political alternative to today’s economic and political orthodoxy. And there’s a strong argument that says that unless conventional environmentalism throws in its lot with this kind of progressive political agenda, it will continue to under-perform.

It’s in that context that Forum for the Future has spent a lot of time developing a new ‘framework’ to conceptualise an alternative model of capitalism. (Further details about the Five Capitals Framework, which we use to underpin much of the work that we do with our partners, can be found here.)

Looking at the mess that contemporary capitalism has made of the world today, it requires a real stretch of the imagination to think through, rigorously and systematically, what genuinely sustainable capitalism would really look like. But to me, it seems unarguable that the bipolar challenges of, on the one hand, the biophysical limits to growth and, on the other, of the terrible damage being done to the human spirit through the pursuit of unbridled materialism, will compel a profound transformation of contemporary capitalism – and sooner rather than later if we want to avoid dramatic social and economic disruption.

Hence the idea of “Capitalism as if the World Matters”: an evolved, intelligent and elegant form of capitalism that puts the Earth at its very centre and ensures that all people are its beneficiaries in recognition of our unavoidable interdependence.

From that perspective, it is only sustainable development that can provide both the intellectual foundations and the operational pragmatism upon which to base such a transformation. This is why sustainable development remains for me the only seriously “big idea” that can bear the weight of that challenge, and why the core values that underpin sustainable development – interdependence, empathy, equity, personal responsibility and intergenerational justice – are the only foundation upon which any viable vision of a better world can possibly be constructed.

Read about the 5 Capitals model here

Read our formal definition of sustainable development here

_{Image: Breno Peck}