Have you used a credit card? This is a silly question. But as my Associated Press friend advises me: Do not assume your reader knows less or more than you. Make sure a grandma from Iowa understands your story. So, simply put, a credit card allows the credit card holder to borrow money from the future to spend today. If the credit card holder can pay back what she borrows on time regularly, she has a good credit rating. In other words, she can borrow more money in the future because she is financially trustworthy. When I apply this concept to study the wicked problem of reducing carbon emissions and changing wasteful consumption behavior, I realize that human beings have long been borrowing fossil fuels and natural resources of the future to build their civilization today. For generations, we are obsessed with the superlative status—the biggest, the best, the fastest etc., our unlimited desire drives modernity and technological advancement.
We can’t pay back our debts that our ancestors owe. They didn’t have smarter-than-us internet-of-things. They didn’t even travel far enough to see how glaciers are melting and how blue our planet is from the window of a spacecraft. We can do better than our ancestors and even faster than our parents’ generations to leave less carbon debts for our future generations.
We don’t have an energy crisis. We have an energy transition crisis.
My generation and global citizens who are younger than me are in deficit of fossil fuels and natural resources unless we have an alternative or multiple alternatives to a life in moderation.
To stabilize the equilibrium of Gaia, a self-regulating Earth, proposed by James Lovelock, it’s imperative to change our credit card mindset of consuming fossil fuel-made products and services. Instead, global citizens who volunteer to make contribution to a circular economy should be rewarded. In my fiction, my characters will pay less, instead of more, for goods and services that are made from a clean energy source. Green premium, an additional cost of choosing a clean technology, will be exempt for individuals and businesses that take the non-fossil fuels route. Organic food and regenerative agriculture food products will be cheaper than conventionally grown food.
Responsible consumers and merchants will get a tax break for reusing and repairing electronic goods and services. If a car has a good maintenance record, it’ll have a higher value in resale. Why not modify this idea a little? If a car owner can keep an electric or hybrid car for a longer lifespan of the car, she will have a better credit rating as well? Yes, again, in my fiction, car dealers get more commissions if they can talk their clients into keeping the same car they sold longer. A circular economy enables products and services to be reused, repaired and remanufactured. I find the auto industry and its by-products sectors can do so much more from design to disposal toward a circular economy. For more about the circular economy, check out the website of Ellen MacArthur Foundation.
Another leading industry that can have a closed-loop circular economy is agriculture and food, the most vulnerable industry to extreme weather patterns and warming climate. I’ve shared my insight in “A Forward-Thinking Foodie.” Check it out. Here are two more interesting examples of a food-related circular economy. A Jordanian food artist has designed a luxury handbag using orange peels. I’m hopeful that the fashion world will be filled with fruity colors and tastes in the near future. A Finnish company has created a waterproof sneaker made from coffee waste and recycled plastic bottles. Are you ready to wear the world’s first coffee sneaker?
We’re born and live in a world of comparison. Without comparison, there won’t be competition, jealousy, desire, depression, hatred and love. These are the sentences with comparative adjectives: Do your parents love you more than they love your younger brother? Do you love your dog more than you love yourself? You’re depressed because your reality is fallen short of expectations. These are also themes in our literature and films. Poets and playwrights are never tied of exploring them. Even the best quantitative analysis needs humans to give meaning to it. Now I see why our digital life has transformed many human brains to follow the machine’s lead. We become less patient and more opinionated. When we are angry, sad or bored, online shopping seems to be a quick outlet to release these emotions. Images, images, sensational images, whether they are still pictures or short videos, we’re comparing what we have or have-nots with what’s available to see and even buy online.
Do you like money? Do you like big money? Do you know the credit card mindset—borrowing money from the future to spend today—can explain why the U.S. federal government runs deficits years on end? I’m asking silly questions again. Bear with my ignorance. The last time the U.S. government had a surplus was in 2001, according to the datalab website of the U.S. Department of the Treasury.
You may skip here if you mind a little overspill of my impression of the official website. The site is interactive and comprehensible for a dummy like me. The texts are big and clear. The numbers are astronomical ending with a letter “T.” T stands for trillion. One trillion has 12 zeros. The colorful graphs help me to understand some basic math in an accounting ledger. So, my administrator-cum-writer’s brain is at work. If we need to put a cap on a country’s annual spending budget, and a household spending also has its limit, isn’t it also pragmatic to have a debt ceiling for all fossil-fuels-based economic activities? The term, gross domestic product (GDP), cannot reflect the environmental aspect of a sustainable retreat. Why not try another indicator such as the green gross domestic product (Green GDP or GGDP)? The Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI), Gross National Happiness Index and alike might be other alternatives.
While we have an option to pay by credit card, I hope technology won’t phase out the old method of paying by cash or even checks. We all have our preferred payment methods. We all will come to a period in our life called senior life. Seniors do not pick up new technology as quickly as young people. In fact, it’s not uncommon that more and more seniors live alone. If they’re lucky, they may have young people and relatives to visit and teach them how to use new technology.
Unlike American people, Chinese people have a social obligation to look after their elder parents. During my volunteer time with seniors, I’ve learned that American seniors might be left alone by their grownup children and the passing of their spouses. A US official finding shows social isolation was associated with about a fifty percent increased risk of dementia. When it comes to an expression of love and care, nothing can compare with human-to-human contact. Perhaps delaying retirement is one way to keep a senior’s mind sharp. It’s not uncommon to see Americans continue working in their 70s and 80s, especially in some traditional sectors.
If you look at the average working age in the IT industry worldwide, and then you compare that age with the average working age in HR, administration, higher education, banking, finance and laws. I just name a few professions that provide secure social and economic status in almost every secular society. The senior positions in our governments are often held by senior citizens who have long passed retirement age. This is not age discrimination. This is just my non-scientifically-proven observation. Could this be a sign of power obsession in broad brushstrokes?
When the young generation is pushing forward the climate movement around the world, our world leaders that take the bolder action usually are the younger ones. What if we conceptualize a sustainable retreat like a global effort of progress? I think carpooling, vanpooling and bundled shipping and alike have already taken a positive effect among conscious consumers. Companies that are making these efforts should be recognized with tax deductions and other government incentives for good practices.
In Hong Kong, some restaurants encourage customers to bring their own lunch boxes. Restaurants also offer rental lunch boxes for takeout. Customers who sign up for the initiative will not be charged for disposable lunch boxes. Indeed, customers are always happy to pay less for more. What if merchants see this “giving customers more” as an investment in the future in exchange for consistent returning customers? When people feel they are doing good deeds for the planet at a low-to-no cost, they will act more. Isn’t this a long-term business growth for sustainable retreat?
(To be continued)