Home Object Activities Contact Who's who How to join NSF How to support NSF What's on Resources Nature and Society Editorial Well, Australia has now ratified the Kyoto Protocol but the ice sheets melt ever more quickly, the oceans continue to die. In Australia itself feral rabbits and weeds flourish. Not much is happening as we wait for yet another economist's report. Big business and insurance companies (at least some sections of these industries) have asked for urgent change to do something about curbing emissions, but there is no sense of urgency in government at the top. Yes, our new Government has lots of problems to attend to, but don't they understand that in a dying environment economics will have no relevance? Until people really understand that their wellbeing, their health, their very lives depend on an environment that provides all the life support that they need, they will do very little to support the environment. That understanding lay behind the formation of the Nature and Society Forum, which aims to spread that knowledge to more and more concerned people. This February is an important date for NSF for it sees the launch of our interactive website, biosensitivefutures.org, a site to help stimulate social change for healthy people on a healthy planet. We have discussed the name, and worried over it, because there is no convenient, easily understood and recognisable word to describe what we are aiming to achieve. It is the same problem that has recurred at times, over the name of our organisation. Nature and Society Forum could be a static organisation studying society and nature as they are. The name does not say that we must look at the links between the two, and get people to learn, to really understand, that in the end our society is totally dependent on nature being healthy. If we persist in damaging nature with our insatiable appetites for possessions, for money, for never-ending growth, then we are digging our society's grave as surely as any glutton has ever dug his grave with his teeth. Over the last half century many people have woken up to the fact that humans are severely damaging, even destroying, nature. Now to cap it all off we are changing the climate. Many individuals and many organisations have taken on the challenge to reverse this trend, some in their local area, others in specific cases: Save the Whales, Save the Rainforests. All these efforts are worthwhile, all these things need saving. Some other organisations, such as NSF, are looking at the overall picture and saying that the problem is so big that unless we change society, then the problems are only going to grow bigger. It is people, particularly our industrial and post-industrial modern consumer society that is never satisfied, that must keep growing, that is the problem. What sort of new society do we need? That's where Biosensitive comes in. This word is trying to describe a society in which the needs of people, and of all other species and the ecosystems of which they are part, are considered and looked after; they are not seen as resources we can exploit and discard at our will. The realisation must be that we are part of nature, not separate, and that we need the rest to be healthy if we want a habitable planet. We must build a society that is sensitive to the rest of the biosphere, a biosensitve society. To achieve this society we have to take action. If we keep going with our current systems and mind frames intact, we will continue to destroy the planet that we know, and in the process any worthwhile future for humanity. There has been a fiction that continued growth is what we need; if we donít have growth we wonít be able to afford to save the environment. Sorry, but this just does not add up. In economic terms we are wealthier than ever before, but we cant even 'afford' to train or pay for our own doctors, nurses, dentists, teachers. We donít have enough tradesmen, but we have oodles of people employed in gambling and other less socially useful pursuits. It is not shortage of money, but a shortage of will and a completely wrong sense of priorities. Study after study has shown that greater wealth has not made people happier. They have longer lives, because we have become very good at replacing bits and pieces of the aging human body, but large numbers eke out their last years in quiet misery. We have not solved the problem of aging brains or the growing number of degenerative diseases. Even in youth and the prime of life, many people are unhappy; our social system is obviously not satisfying their needs. Now I agree that humans have a unique ability to make themselves unhappy (our consciousness can be a curse), but surely we could develop a society in which happiness and contentment are more common than they are today. Our aim for a biosensitive society is that humans should have a more contented, healthier, satisfying society by eliminating the emphasis on material goods and energy-gobbling pastimes. Instead we need a just, equitable society that provides plenty of opportunity for agreeable social interaction, meaningful work, moderate comfort for all, and sufficient physical exertion to keep bodies and brains healthy. This society must satisfy innate human needs without trashing the planet, so that we keep alive the various biosystems, with their fascinating inhabitants, which together make Earth such a wonderful place. To achieve a biosensitive society we need to reach as many people as possible. We encourage you to take part in this project: go to the website, tell everyone you know who may be interested, and take part in the roundtable discussion. Help to make Biosensitivity as much part of the language as biodiversity already is, so that politicians, policymakers and everyone else can combine to move society in the only direction that can ensure a future. Jenny Wanless February - March 2008 edition accessible here Back to top ________________________________________________________________
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