The Environmental Endgame: Mainstream Economics, Ecological Disaster, and Human Survival

. . . May God keep us
From single Vision and Newton’s sleep!

— WILLIAM BLAKE

Let us now imagine that you have been playing the Godgame on your home computer for some time and have now have arrived at the phase of the game where the players are challenged to coordinate large-scale human activities in environmentally responsible ways on a global or planetary scale. At this point, another question appears on the screen: “What narra- tives define the institutional frameworks and processes that are primarily responsible for coordinating the relationship between parts (large-scale human activities) and whole (global environment or ecosystem)?” The obvious answer is the political narrative that coordinates the relation- ships between peoples and governments in the international community and the economic narrative that serves as the basis for coordinating vir- tually all large-scale economic activities.

When we think about how to resolve the crisis in the global environ- ment in these terms, the solution seems rather obvious. The international community must begin very soon to develop and implement political and economic narratives that can serve as the basis for articulating institu- tional frameworks and processes that can coordinate large-scale human activities in ways that can allow for the emergence of sustainable condi- tions in the global environment. Equally obvious, this effort must be predi- cated on our best scientific understanding of the actual dynamics of the

-81-