50. How do we get to a more sustainable society? (Sharachchandra Lele)

Half a century ago a group of more than 2,000 scientists signed a warning of environmental crisis and nuclear war. Named after the French town where it was compiled, the “Menton Message” turned out to be somewhat hyperbolic in its environmental predictions, and did not account for some of humankind’s remarkable developmental progress over the following decades. However, some of its concerns certainly remain prescient today. And so another, smaller, group of scientists convened, on the 50-year anniversary of the Menton Message, to revisit and modernize some of its assertions. The resulting document is “A letter to fellow citizens of Earth”, which was also summarized in an article for the journal “Nature”. It makes three key points:

• “individualistic, materialistic, exploitative short-term thinking has led us to lose sight of the public good”
• “a focus on economic growth distracts from achieving well-being and happiness… and… destroys our shared resources”
• “current economic, political and social institutions are failing us”

Although the new letter acknowledges some of the progress that we have made since the Menton Message, it emphasizes the threats and asserts the urgent need for change. 

Sharachchandra Lele is one of the two main authors of the 2022 letter, and the Nature article. I pushed him on the accuracy of some of the letter’s claims and assertions. The resulting conversation interrogates different aspects of the letter, and questions the idea that we are on completely the wrong track to make things right. Our conversation jumps around a bit and does not follow the sequence of the letter. But it’s about more than the letter. It’s about the notion that we need to drastically change the way we run the planet and how to affect those changes. This episode and episode 48 with Ron Bailey function as counter-points to each other, so they can be listened to as a set.

Links to resources

• The Menton Message - The original French version of the message (the English is probably available online somewhere)
• A letter to fellow citizens of Earth - The follow-up to the Menton Message, compiled by Sharad and others
• Fifty years after UN environment summit, researchers renew call for action - 2022 correspondence in the journal, Nature, co-authored by Sharad, and summarizing "A letter to fellow citizens of Earth"

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