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Introduction to the path to a survivable future which IS living the principles of Sustainable Prosperity.
As difficult as it seems to understand, at the deepest levels, the current global warming extinction emergency and many of the world's other 11 major global crises are directly or indirectly caused by Overshoot. Overshoot simply means that resource demand is over and beyond that resource's regeneration or renewal capacity.
Excessive demand leading to overshoot is driven by both consumption and population. Right now, the human population's need and demand for the Earth's resources has well exceeded the Earth's carrying capacity to regenerate those resources. For example, our current fossil fuel use, which is causing the global warming emergency, is caused by our increasing population demanding more consumer goods. As a result, not only are we depleting the non-renewable fossil fuels that took millions of years to create, we are also polluting and poisoning our atmosphere and oceans with toxic fossil fuel by-products.
One also could call overshoot an environmental and energy management ignorance or even greed in simple moral or ethical terms. But, whatever you call it, our taking more resources from the Earth than the Earth can renewably supply or resupply is the single deepest cause of most of today's major global problems. It contributes significantly to our air, water, and land pollution and even many of our current economic and social inequalities.
While our current global warming emergency is directly caused by burning fossil fuels and polluting the atmosphere and our oceans with carbon, methane, etc., for its complete long-term solution, it is critical to address the deeper, underlying overshoot issues on ecological, economic, social, and energy management levels. It bears repeating that many of these same overshoot issues also fuel our 11 major global crises' worsening.
The opposite of overshoot would also include creating a sustainable population level balanced with its available renewable resources. (This is commonly known as the carrying capacity of an area.) For humanity to begin to live within its carrying capacity and not continue to overshoot its resources, we will have to do something radically new, which we call living the principles of Sustainable Prosperity.
We believe that the principles of Sustainable Prosperity (below) will most likely come into being only after the Great Global Collapse has occurred. The reasons for this are:
1. Existing economic, political, and social systems and human power structures are so entrenched and self-protecting that they will never allow the needed fundamental changes, which in many cases would remove their positions of special privilege, advantage, and power.
2. The populations which support the existing economic, political, and social systems are widely ignorant of the concept of resource overshoot and its accelerating dangers. They also have become so used to the comforts these systems provide; they will resist needed improvements until something happens to them that is so devastating (the Great Global Collapse) that they will finally be ready to change. It is like the old saying, "people will only change when the pain going forward is less than the pain of staying where they are."
As you read about Sustainable Prosperity in this booklet, you will discover the many social, economic, and even political policy overshoot causes hidden behind our inability to create long-term global warming solutions and many of our other 11 major global crises. If we do not quickly apply the principles of Sustainable Prosperity to our lives, livelihoods, and societies, we and humanity will become like "dead man walking" who will be unable to slow or stop our own ecological, economic, and social demise.
And finally, after you have finished the following Sustainable Prosperity booklet, please also review the following two links to review Part 2 of the Job One for Humanity Climate Resilience Plan. They will provide additional and essential adaptation steps aligned with the principles and processes of Sustainable Prosperity to help you better manage the global warming emergency and the other 11 global crises we are now facing. We also strongly recommend reading the book Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change by William Catton.
What is Sustainable Prosperity
We all wish for prosperity (abundance) and for it to continue as long as possible (sustainability). But in these uncertain times of the escalating global warming emergency and the worsening of the world's other major 11 global crises, can we count on having this?
As we move toward raising families, wouldn't it be nice to know that we, others, our environment, and our economic and social systems will continue to prosper sustainably? Of course, we want that.
Wouldn't it be nice if there was a way to create lives and livelihoods of sustainable prosperity to create a better world, so many of us are seeking?
Where did the principles and processes of Sustainability Prosperity come from
Many Sustainable Prosperity principles are derived from evolution's time-proven principles for sustaining success in an individual, group, or system. Other principles and processes of Sustainable Prosperity come from various movements such as the Sustainability movement, the Simplicity movement, the Deep Adaptation movement, and the Degrowth movement.
What are the core concepts of Sustainable Prosperity
The core concept of Sustainable Prosperity is that:
there is an intelligent way for everyone to have ample sufficiency and abundance (prosperity) in the vital and meaningful areas of life and have this prosperity be sustainable over the long term without destroying other biological systems or harming the other essential Earth systems.
This new Sustainable Prosperity has processes and principles that support one person's prosperity contributing to another's without detracting from it or the wellbeing of other species and the Earth.
The above is the most basic starting idea of Sustainable Prosperity. But, there is much more to understand about ts principles and achieve its strategies, as you will find in the following pages of this online booklet.
The Sustainable Prosperity principles can:
a.) help us correct the problems of resource overshoot.
a.) sustainably improve most areas of your life besides just physical prosperity.
b.) help us resolve the tremendous adaptive challenge of escalating global warming caused by fossil fuel burning. (Practicing the action steps of Sustainable Prosperity can also do a lot to help us get close to meeting the life-critical 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets.)
c.) help us resolve many of our 11 other major global crises facing humanity.
d.) help us also create new sustainable economics and a new sustainable consumer (prosumer), driven economy. (This would be to replace the current modern environment-destroying, "consume, waste and pollute" consumerism.) And,
e.) create hundreds of millions of well-paying new jobs as we transition from the Second Industrial Revolution to the Third Industrial Revolution during the next 20 years.
Why the principles and processes of Sustainable Prosperity are so crucial at this time
Humanity is at a crossroads. We are already in a global collapse process because our existing economic, political, and social systems do not deal with resource overshoot and the overpopulation which drives it.
These existing systems are unlikely to make the needed changes until these systems fall in the Great Global Collapse. Because of this harsh reality, humanity must begin envisioning the structural and process improvements required for the future. This way, some of humanity that survives the Great Global Collapse can use these principles and processes to create the new structures and systems required for a possible Great Global Rebirth.
The Sustainable Prosperity booklet below is starting this envisioning process for our future. Many people and groups have already adopted many of its principles and processes.
"The principles of Sustainable Prosperity are necessary evolutionary adaptations for our current economic, social, and political crises. These adaptations will help humanity both thrive and overcome the harsh realities of Earth's diminishing resources, as well as the challenges of supporting humanity's remaining population. These new Sustainable Prosperity adaptations are critical to resolving global warming and our 11 other major global crises. If humanity wishes to go on as a species, the principles and actions of Sustainable Prosperity will need to be embraced globally." Lawrence Wollersheim
After you have finished reading this booklet, please let us know if you think we have missed any essential principles or processes by emailing us at (manage@JobOneforHumanity.org).
When you are reading the Sustainable Prosperity pages below, keep in mind that these are the processes and principles that we eventually will need to enact to prevent future overshoot and resolve global warming and our 11 other major global crises!
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Please start with this new link on the triple bottom line and full cost accounting then, click the properly sequenced links below to continue with this online booklet on Sustainable Prosperity...