This email below was sent on 12/10/2022, to various cabinet members: Liz Truss (PM), Alok Sharma (President COP26), Kwasi Kwarteng (Chancellor), Jacob Rees-Mogg (Secretary of State for BEIS i.e. Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy) , the UK Committee on Climate Change, the UK BEIS, and a group of interested Lords (Peers for the Planet).
Dear Friends,
My network now includes an American lawyer, Tim MacDonald, who has founded an organisation called Bank of Nature. This organisation was founded with a view to encouraging us to focus financial transactions on activities that result in eco-friendly outcomes. Together we realised that because of a recent enhancement to our ‘Declaration of Human Rights’, there is now a legal case against the pursuit of growth economics. I feel sure that many in the anti-growth coalition will be keen to bring this case to court. Therefore, I would strongly advise that you pre-empt the process. There is a submission to the ongoing BEIS Net-zero consultation in the name of the anti-growth coalition; which suggests a way forward which would not rely on GDP growth. I would strongly urge you to consider following the advice offered in that paper.
The legal case against GDP growth economics is detailed in the paragraph below:
There is a legal case that could be raised against many pension managers. Many pension funds invest within the existing stock-markets. The case would challenge whether the act of investing money from pensions on the stock markets, contravenes their fiduciary obligations. This case is justified at the moment, because there are no stock markets which operate in way which is proven to be ecological sustainable. On the contrary, we know that the global economic model is ecologically damaging; because it seeks to increase Gross Domestic Product (GDP). GDP increases with all three of the key drivers of environmental damage; these three key drivers were identified through the I=PAT equation. Therefore the existing stock markets are exacerbating ecological overshoot, and accelerating the ongoing ecological collapse. Both animal and human lives have already been shortened by ecological collapse, and the practice is increasingly threatening our near-term survival. Therefore these stock markets, and the GDP model of economic growth, are together a violation of a recent addition to our Human Rights Act. On 8 October 2021, the UN Human Rights Council adopted resolution 48/13 recognizing that a clean, healthy and sustainable environment is a human right.
As you can see, the logic in the case is not complex. There is no sense in damaging our ecosystems any further, by taking something like this through the courts. We have to change our behaviours and attitudes radically and urgently to soften the collapse which is rapidly escalating. The new 3Rs need to be taught urgently: Realisation, Remorse and Reparation. We can show worthy leadership at COP27, by urging the world to ratify the UN Charter for Ecological Justice and commencing reparations to the animal world and ourselves. The current system is not only ecologically destructive, it has injured our souls and our common sense. Why else do we cling to an ecocidal economic system that is increasing the carnage caused every minute of every day? We must all travel the Ego to Eco Journey in Leadership and Governance.