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Data: 26-jan-03
Hora: 07:50:37
Conferência sobre A Ciência para uma Vida Sustentável proferida por Fritjof Capra em Porto Alegre para mais de 3 mil pessoas no auditório Araújo Viana, na manhã do dia 25 de janeiro de 2003. Participaram como debatedores Leonardo Boff e o Lama Padma Santem.
by Fritjof Capra
I would like to begin by introducing myself and my work to you at a more personal level. For the past thirty years, my professional life has had two sides. I am a scientist and science writer, and I also work as an environmental educator and activist. I would like to tell you a little about both of these sides and show you how they are in fact interrelated.
I was trained as a physicist and did research in theoretical high energy physics in the 1960s and 1970s. From my early student years, I was fascinated by the dramatic changes of concepts and ideas that occurred in physics during the first three decades of the twentieth century. In my first book, The Tao of Physics (1975), I discussed the profound change in our worldview that was brought about by the conceptual revolution in physics — a change from the mechanistic worldview of Descartes and Newton to a holistic and ecological view.
In my subsequent research and writing, I engaged in a systematic exploration of a central theme: the fundamental change of world view — or change of paradigms, as it is often called — that is now also occurring in the other sciences and in society; the unfolding of a new vision of reality, and the social implications of this cultural transformation.
To connect the conceptual changes in science with the broader change of worldview and values in society, I had to go beyond physics and look for a broader conceptual framework. In doing so, I realized that our major social issues — health, education, human rights, social justice, political power, protection of the environment, the management of business enterprises, the economy, and so on — all have to do with living systems; with individual human beings, social systems, and ecosystems.
With this realization, my research interests shifted from physics to the life sciences, and I began to put together the conceptual framework I was looking for, using insights from the theory of living systems, complexity theory, and ecology.
At the same time, during the 1980s, I became involved in environmental activism. In 1984 I founded an ecological think tank, called the Elmwood Institute, and over the next ten years we built up an international network of thinkers and activists from many fields and in many parts of the world. In 1994, we transformed the Institute into an organization called Center for Ecoliteracy, which promotes “education for sustainable living” in primary and secondary schools.
Having worked as an environmental educator and activist for twenty years, I now have many personal contacts in the global network of NGOs — of scholars, activists, and institutions — that forms the new global civil society, as I shall discuss later on in my talk.
To conclude this introduction, I want to tell you that over the years I have realized more and more that the two sides of my professional life are, in fact, closely interrelated. This has been a very happy realization, because it allows me to pursue my intellectual interests as a scientist in a way that is fully consistent with my values, and thus to maintain my personal integrity.
The main focus of my environmental education and activism is to help build and nurture sustainable communities — communities in which we can satisfy our needs and aspirations without diminishing the chances of future generations. To build sustainable communities, we can learn valuable lessons from the study of ecosystems, which are sustainable communities of plants, animals, and microorganisms. So, the quest for ecological sustainability naturally leads to the question, how do ecosystems work? How do they organize themselves to sustain their life processes over time? And this question, in turn, leads to the more general question, how do living systems — organisms, ecosystems, and social systems — organize themselves? In other words, what is the nature of life? And this is the focus of my theoretical work.
During the last five years I developed a conceptual framework that integrates three dimensions of life: the biological, the cognitive, and the social. I present this framework in my new book, titled The Hidden Connections. My aim in this book is not only to offer a unified view of life, mind, and society, but also to develop a coherent systematic approach to some of the critical issues of our time. This lecture will be based entirely on my new book.
The title the book is taken from a speech by the Czech playwright and statesman Václav Havel, in which he said: “Education today is the ability to perceive the hidden connections between phenomena.” In science, we refer to this ability as systemic thinking, or “systems thinking.” It means thinking in terms of relationships, patterns, and context.
Over the past twenty years, systems thinking has been raised to a new level with the development of complexity theory, technically known as nonlinear dynamics. This is a new mathematical language and a new set of concepts to describe complex nonlinear systems.
In this book I use systemic thinking and some of the key concepts of complexity theory to develop a unified view of life, mind, and society. I extend the systems approach to the social and cultural domain and apply it to some of the major issues of our time.
One of the most important insights of the systemic understanding of life is the recognition that networks are the basic pattern of organization of all living systems. Ecosystems are understood in terms of food webs (i.e., networks of organisms); organisms are networks of cells, organs, and organ systems; and cells are networks of molecules. The network is a pattern that is common to all life. Wherever we see life, we see networks.
It is important to realize that these living networks are not material structures, like a fishing net or a spider’s web. They are functional networks, networks of relationships between various processes. In a cell, for example, these processes are chemical reactions between the cell’s molecules. In a food web, the processes are processes of feeding, of organisms eating one another. In a social network, the processes are processes of communication. In all cases the network is a nonmaterial pattern of relationships.
Closer examination of these living networks has shown that their key characteristic is that they are self-generating. In a cell, for example, all the biological structures — the proteins, enzymes, the DNA, the cell membrane, etc. — are continually produced, repaired, and regenerated by the cellular network. Similarly, at the level of a multicellular organism, the bodily cells are continually regenerated and recycled by the organism’s metabolic network. Living networks continually create, or recreate themselves by transforming or replacing their components. In this way they undergo continual structural changes while preserving their web-like patterns of organization. mind and consciousness
One of the most radical insights of the new understanding of life is a novel conception of mind and consciousness that overcomes the Cartesian division between mind and matter. The decisive advance has been to abandon the Cartesian view of mind as a thing (res cogitans) in favor of viewing mind and consciousness as part of the life process. During the past twenty-five years, the study of mind from this new perspective has blossomed into a rich interdisciplinary field, known as cognitive science, which transcends the traditional frameworks of biology, psychology, and epistemology.
The central insight of cognitive science is the identification of cognition, the process of knowing, with the process of life. Cognition is the activity involved in the self-generation and self-perpetuation of living networks. This organizing activity of living systems, at all levels of life, is mental activity. Thus life and cognition become inseparably connected. Mind — or, more accurately, mental activity — is immanent in matter at all levels of life.
With this new conception of mind, the Cartesian division is finally overcome. Mind and matter no longer appear to belong to two separate categories, but can be seen as representing two complementary aspects of the phenomenon of life — the process aspect and the structure aspect. At all levels of life, beginning with the simplest cell, mind and matter, process and structure, are inseparably connected. For the first time, we have a scientific theory that unifies mind, matter, and life.
Cognition, in this view, is associated with all levels of life and is thus a much broader phenomenon than consciousness. Consciousness — that is, conscious, lived experience — unfolds at certain levels of cognitive complexity, which require a brain and a higher nervous system. In other words, consciousness is a special kind of cognitive process that emerges when cognition reaches a certain level of complexity. social networks
Let me now move on from biological to social systems. Life in the social realm can also be understood in terms of networks, but here we are not dealing with chemical reactions; we are dealing with communications. Living networks in human society are networks of communications. Like biological networks, they are self-generating, but what they generate is mostly nonmaterial. Each communication creates thoughts and meaning, which give rise to further communications, and thus the entire network generates itself.
The dimension of meaning is crucial to understand social networks. Even when they generate material structures — such as material goods, artifacts, or works of art — these structures are very different from the ones produced by biological networks. They are usually produced for a purpose, according to some design, and they embody some meaning.
As communications continue in a social network, they form multiple feedback loops which, eventually, produce a shared system of beliefs, explanations, and values — a common context of meaning, known as culture, which is continually sustained by further communications. Through culture individuals acquire identities as members of the social network, and in this way the network generates its own boundary.
Let me now juxtapose biological and social networks and highlight their similarities and differences. Biological networks operate in the realm of matter; social networks operate in the realm of meaning. Both produce material structures, and social networks also produce the nonmaterial characteristics of culture — values, rules of behavior, shared knowledge, etc.
Biological systems exchange molecules in their networks of chemical reactions; social systems exchange information and ideas in their networks of communications.
Biological networks produce and sustain a material boundary, which imposes constraints on the chemistry that takes place inside it. Social networks produce and sustain a nonmaterial, cultural boundary, which imposes constraints on the behavior of its members.
The analysis of the similarities and differences between biological and social networks is central to my synthesis of the new scientific understanding of life. As I mentioned before, my aim is not only to offer a unified view of life, mind, and society, but also to develop a coherent, systemic approach to some of the critical issues of our time.
As this new century unfolds, there are two developments that will have major impacts on the well-being and ways of life of humanity. Both have to do with networks, and both involve radically new technologies. One of them is the rise of global capitalism; the other is the creation of sustainable communities based on the practice of ecological design. Whereas global capitalism is concerned with electronic networks of financial and informational flows, ecological design is concerned with ecological networks of energy and material flows. The goal of the global economy, in its present form, is to maximize the wealth and power of its elites; the goal of ecological design to maximize the sustainability of the web of life. Let me now review these two developments in more detail.
During the past three decades, the information technology revolution has given rise to a new type of capitalism that is profoundly different from the one formed during the Industrial Revolution, or the one that emerged after the Second World War. It is characterized by three fundamental features. Its core economic activities are global; the main sources of productivity and competitiveness are innovation, knowledge generation, and information processing; and it is structured largely around networks of financial flows. This new global capitalism is also referred to as “the new economy,” or simply as “globalization.”
In the new economy, capital works in real time, moving rapidly through global financial networks. From these networks it is invested in all kinds of economic activity, and most of what is extracted as profit is channeled back into the meta-network of financial flows. Sophisticated information and communication technologies enable financial capital to move rapidly from one option to another in a relentless global search for investment opportunities.
The movements of this electronically operated global casino do not follow any market logic. The markets are continually manipulated and transformed by computer-enacted investment strategies, subjective perceptions of influential analysts, political events in any part of the world, and — most significantly — by unsuspected turbulences caused by the complex interactions of capital flows in this highly nonlinear system. These largely uncontrolled turbulences have resulted in a series of severe financial crises in recent years, from Mexico (1994) to the Asian Pacific (1997), Russia (1998), and Brazil (1999).
The impact of the new economy on human well-being has been mostly negative. It has enriched a global elite of financial speculators, entrepreneurs, and high-tech professionals. At the very top, there has been an unprecedented accumulation of wealth, and global capitalism has also benefited some national economies, especially in Asian countries. But overall its social and environmental consequences have been disastrous.
The rise of global capitalism has been accompanied by rising social inequality and polarization, both internationally and within countries. In particular, poverty and social inequality have increased through the process of social exclusion, which is a direct consequence of the new economy’s network structure. As the flows of capital and information interlink worldwide networks, they exclude from these networks all populations and territories that are of no value or interest to their search for financial gain. As a result, certain segments of societies, areas of cities, regions, and even entire countries become economically irrelevant.
Thus, a new impoverished segment of humanity has emerged around the world as a direct consequence of globalization. It comprises large areas of the globe, including much of Sub-Saharan Africa and rural areas of Asia and Latin America. But the new geography of social exclusion also includes portions of every country and every city in the world.
If you want to see the human face of globalization, look at the photographs by the well-known Brazilian photo-journalist Sebstião Salgado. He recently completed a seven-year project, titled “migrations,” which took him to 40 countries around the world where he shot thousands of pictures of migrants and refugees, showing their great distress and sorrow, but also their courage and resourcefulness. Salgado’s epic photographs of a never-ending sea of humanity are a compelling testimony to human dignity and to the failure of global capitalism.
According to the doctrine of economic globalization known as “neo-liberalism,” the free-trade agreements imposed by the World Trade Organization (WTO) on its member countries will increase global trade; this will create a global economic expansion; and global economic growth will decrease poverty, because its benefits will eventually “trickle down” to all.
This reasoning is fundamentally flawed. Global capitalism does not alleviate poverty and social exclusion; on the contrary, it exacerbates them. Neo-liberalism has been blind to this effect because corporate economists have traditionally excluded the social costs of economic activity from their models. Similarly, most conventional economists have ignored the new economy’s environmental cost — the increase and acceleration of global environmental destruction, which is as severe, if not more so, than its social impact.
One of the tenets of neo-liberalism is that poor countries should concentrate on producing a few special goods for export in order to obtain foreign exchange, and should import most other commodities. This emphasis on export has led to the rapid depletion of the natural resources required to produce export crops in country after country — diversion of fresh water from vital rice paddies to prawn farms; a focus on water-intensive crops, such as sugar cane, that result in dried-up river beds; conversion of good agricultural land into cash-crop plantations; and forced migration of large numbers of farmers from their lands. All over the world there are countless examples of how economic globalization is worsening environmental destruction.
Since money-making is the dominant value of global capitalism, its representatives seek to eliminate environmental regulations under the guise of “free trade” wherever they can, lest these regulations interfere with profits. Thus the new economy causes environmental destruction not only by increasing the impact of its operations on the world’s ecosystems, but also by eliminating national environmental laws in country after country. In other words, environmental destruction is not only a side effect, but is also an integral part of the design of global capitalism.
In the last few years, the social and ecological impacts of globalization have been discussed extensively by scholars and community leaders. Their analyses show that the new economy is producing a multitude of interconnected harmful consequences — rising social inequality and social exclusion, a breakdown of democracy, more rapid and extensive deterioration of the natural environment, and increasing poverty and alienation. The new global capitalism has threatened and destroyed local communities around the world; and with the pursuit of an ill-conceived biotechnology it has invaded the sanctity of life by attempting to turn diversity into monoculture, ecology into engineering, and life itself into a commodity.
It has become increasingly clear that global capitalism in its present form is unsustainable and needs to be fundamentally redesigned. Indeed, scholars, community leaders, and grassroots activists around the world are raising their voices, demanding that we must “change the game” and suggesting concrete ways of doing so.
Any realistic discussion of changing the game must begin with the recognition that the current form of economic globalization has been consciously designed and can be reshaped. The so-called “global market” is really a network of machines programmed according to the fundamental principle that money-making should take precedence over human rights, democracy, environmental protection, or any other value. However, the same electronic networks of financial and informational flows could have other values built into them. The critical issue is not technology, but politics. As we say here in Porto Alegre, "Another world is possible." the global civil society
At the turn of this century, an impressive global coalition of NGOs formed around the core values of human dignity and ecological sustainability. In 1999, hundreds of these grassroots organizations interlinked electronically for several months to prepare for joint protest actions at the meeting of the WTO in Seattle. The "Seattle Coalition," as it is now called, was extremely successful in derailing the WTO meeting and in making its views known to the world. Its concerted actions have permanently changed the political climate around the issue of economic globalization.
One of the main reasons why the Seattle coalition, or global justice movement, has been so successful is that it is based on network strategies. As you well know, networks and networking have become a major focus of attention in recent years. The Internet has become a powerful global network of communications, and most large corporations today exist as networks of smaller units. Similar networks exist among nonprofit and nongovernmental organizations. Indeed, "networking" has been one of the main activities of political grassroots organizations for many years. The environmental movement, the human rights movement, the feminist movement, the peace movement, and many other political and cultural grassroots movements have organized themselves as networks that transcend national boundaries.
The World Social Forum here is a celebration of global networking. With their skillful use of the Internet, the NGOs in the global justice movement have become effective political actors who are independent of traditional national or international institutions. They constitute a new kind of civil society organized around reshaping globalization and global in its scope and organization.
To place the political discourse within a systemic and ecological perspective, the global civil society relies on a network of scholars, research institutes, think tanks, and centers of learning that largely operate outside our leading academic institutions, business organizations, and government agencies. There are dozens of these institutions of research and learning in all parts of the world today. Their common characteristic is that they pursue their research and teaching within an explicit framework of shared core values.
Most of these research institutes are communities of both scholars and activists who are engaged in a wide variety of projects and campaigns. Among them, there are three clusters of issues that seem to be focal points for the largest and most active grassroots coalitions. One is the challenge of reshaping the governing rules and institutions of globalization; another is the opposition to genetically modified foods and the promotion of sustainable agriculture; and the third is ecological design — a concerted effort to redesign our physical structures, cities, technologies, and industries so as to make them ecologically sustainable.
I shall now concentrate on that third issue cluster, ecological sustainability and ecological design.
There has been a lot of confusion around the concept of ecological sustainability; so, I think it is worthwhile to reflect for a moment about what "sustainability" really means. The concept was introduced in the early 1980s by Lester Brown, founder of the Worldwatch Institute, who defined a sustainable community as one that is able to satisfy its needs without diminishing the chances of future generations. Several years later, the so-called “Brundtland Report,” commissioned by the UN, used the same definition to present the notion of “sustainable development”: Humankind has the ability to achieve sustainable development — to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
These definitions of sustainability are important moral exhortations. They remind us of our responsibility to pass on to our children and grandchildren a world with as many opportunities as the ones we inherited. However, they do not tell us anything about how to actually build a sustainable society. What we need is an operational definition of ecological sustainability.
The key to such an operational definition is the realization that we do not need to invent sustainable human communities from zero but can model them after nature’s ecosystems, which are sustainable communities of plants, animals, and microorganisms. Since the outstanding characteristic of the biosphere is its inherent ability to sustain life, a sustainable human community must be designed in such a manner that its ways of life, businesses, economy, physical structures, and technologies do not interfere with nature's inherent ability to sustain life.
This definition implies that the first step in our endeavor to build sustainable communities must be to become “ecologically literate,” i.e., to understand the principles of organization that ecosystems have evolved to sustain the web of life. In the coming decades the survival of humanity will depend on our ecological literacy — our ability to understand the basic principles of ecology and to live accordingly.
This means that ecological literacy must become a critical skill for politicians, business leaders, and professionals in all spheres, and should be the most important part of education at all levels — from primary and secondary schools to colleges, universities, and the continuing education and training of professionals.
We need to teach our children the fundamental facts of life — that one species' waste is another species' food; that matter cycles continually through the web of life; that the energy driving the ecological cycles flows from the sun; that diversity assures resilience; that life, from its beginning more than three billion years ago, did not take over the planet by combat but by networking.
Ecological literacy is the first step on the road to sustainability. The second step is ecological design. We need to apply our ecological knowledge to the fundamental redesign of our technologies and social institutions, so as to bridge the current gap between human design and the ecologically sustainable systems of nature.
Design, in the broadest sense, consists in shaping flows of energy and materials for human purposes. Ecological design is a process in which our human purposes are carefully meshed with the larger patterns and flows of the natural world. Ecological design principles reflect the principles of organization that nature has evolved to sustain the web of life. To practice industrial design in such a context requires a fundamental shift in our attitude toward nature, a shift from finding out what we can extract from nature, to what we can learn from her.
In recent years, there has been a dramatic rise in ecologically oriented design practices and projects, all of which are now well documented. Let me now just concentrate on one important ecodesign area — energy. energy from the sun
In a sustainable society, all human activities and industrial processes must be fueled by solar energy like the processes in nature’s ecosystems. Because of the critical role of carbon in global climate change, it is evident that fossil fuels are unsustainable in the long run. Hence, the shift to a sustainable society centrally includes a shift from fossil fuels to solar power.
Indeed, solar energy is the energy sector that has seen the fastest growth over the past decade. The use of photovoltaic cells increased by about 17 percent a year in the 1990s, and wind power has grown even more spectacularly. It increased by about 24 percent a year during the 1990s, and in 2001 wind generating capacity increased by an astonishing 31%. Since 1995, wind power has increased nearly fivefold, while coal declined by 8%. Wind power offers long-term price stability and energy independence. There is no OPEC for wind, because wind is widely dispersed.
The total generating capacity from wind is now 23,000 megawatts worldwide, enough to meet the residential electricity needs of some 23 million people (1 megawatt per 1,000 people). Over the next decade, Europe alone plans to add about three times that amount. Even with this dramatic growth, the development of wind power is only at the beginning.
Any realistic solar energy program will have to come up with enough liquid fuel to operate our airplanes, buses, cars, and trucks. Until recently, this has been the Achilles heel of all renewable-energy scenarios. During the last few years, however, this problem found a spectacular solution with the development of efficient hydrogen fuel cells that promise to inaugurate a new era in energy production — the “hydrogen economy.”
A fuel cell is an electrochemical device that combines hydrogen with oxygen to produce electricity and water — and nothing else! This makes hydrogen the ultimate clean fuel. Several companies around the world are now racing to be the first to commercially produce residential fuel cell systems.
In the meantime, Iceland has launched a multi-million-dollar venture to create the world’s first hydrogen economy. To do so, Iceland will use its vast geothermal and hydroelectric resources to produce hydrogen from sea water, to be used first in buses and then in passenger cars and fishing vessels. The goal set by the government is to complete the transition to hydrogen between 2030 and 2040.
Two months ago, European Union committed itself to spending over 2 billion euros over the next 5 years for research into sustainable energy projects with the central focus on hydrogen fuel cells. The EU has set a goal of obtaining 22% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2010.
At present, natural gas is the most common source of hydrogen, but separation from water with the help of renewable energy sources (especially wind power) will be the most economical and cleanest method in the long run. When that happens, we will have created a truly sustainable system of energy generation, using solar energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, producing electricity from hydrogen, and ending up again with water.
Closely connected with the shift to renewable energy sources is the redesign of automobiles, which may be the ecodesign branch with the most far-reaching industrial consequences. It involves design ideas so radical that they will not only change today’s automobile industry beyond recognition but may have equally sweeping effects on the associated oil, steel, and electricity industries.
Physicist Amory Lovins and his colleagues at the Rocky Mountain Institute have synthesized these ideas into a conceptual design they call the “hypercar,” which combines three key elements: It is ultralight, because the standard metal auto body is replaced by a body made of strong carbon fibers embedded in special moldable plastics, which cuts the car’s weight in half. Secondly, the hypercar has high aerodynamic efficiency; and thirdly, it is propelled by a “hybrid-electric” drive, which combines an electric motor with fuel that produces the electricity for the motor on board.
When these three elements are integrated into a single design, they save at least 70-80 percent of the fuel used by standard cars, while also making the car safer and more comfortable.
Hybrid cars can use gasoline or a variety of cleaner options. The cleanest, most efficient, and most elegant way is to use hydrogen in a fuel cell. Such an automobile not only operates silently and without any pollution, but also becomes, in effect, a small power plant on wheels. When the car is not used — in other words, most of the time — the electricity produced by its fuel cell could be sent into the electric grid and the owner could automatically be credited for it.
Toyota and Honda were the first to offer hybrid cars with fuel efficiencies of 50 miles/gallon (18 km/l). Similar cars, achieving fuel efficiencies of about 80 miles/gallon (30 km/l), have been tested by General Motors, Ford, and Daimler Chrysler, and are now heading for production. In addition, fuel-cell cars are slated for production within the next three years by eight major automakers. the transition to the hydrogen economy
We are now at the beginning of a historic transition from the petroleum age to the hydrogen age. I can say this confidently for three reasons:
Taken together, these three aspects of the economics of oil make it clear that oil will eventually become uncompetitive, compared to hydrogen, and thus no longer worth extracting. As the ecodesigners like to point out, the Stone Age did not end because people ran out of stones. Similarly, the Petroleum Age will not end because we will run out of petroleum. It will end because we have developed superior technologies. The technological and political context of the transition to hydrogen is still unclear, but we should realize that evolutionary changes of this magnitude cannot be prevented by short-term political activities.
The transition to the hydrogen economy will have profound social and political consequences, as countries gradually will become independent of imported oil. It will fundamentally change U.S. foreign and military policies, especially in the Middle East, which are currently driven by the perception of oil as a "strategic resource."
This perception is false. Even now the United States has the technologies to completely free itself from its dependence on Persian Gulf oil. A rapid shift to the hydrogen economy would make it possible to shift American foreign policy from the current focus on extraction of oil and other natural resources to a new focus on ending world hunger and homelessness, and on restoring the natural environment instead of destroying it. Such a new focus would dramatically increase world security and would be the best anti-terrorism policy. The shift to the hydrogen economy in the United States should therefore be financed by the Defense Department which has plenty of money to do so.
The hydrogen economy will also be extremely important in the developing world where lack of access to energy, especially electricity, is a key factor in perpetuating poverty. Villages around the world will be able to install renewable energy technologies — photovoltaic, wind, or biomass — to produce hydrogen from water and store it for subsequent use in fuel cells. The goal ought to be to provide stationary fuel cells for every neighborhood and village in the developing world. Fulfilling the energy needs of the developing world with renewable resources and hydrogen will be the only way to lift billions of people out of poverty.
In addition to producing electricity, hydrogen fuel cells also produce pure drinking water as a by-product, which will be a significant advantage in village communities around the world where access to clean water is often difficult. conclusion
In conclusion, I want to remind you of the two developments that will have decisive impacts on our well-being and future ways of life —the rise of global capitalism, and the creation of sustainable communities based on the practice of ecological design. These two scenarios — each involving complex networks and special advanced technologies — are currently on a collision course. Whereas every member of a living network is included and contributes to the sustainability of the whole, global capitalism is based on the principle that money-making should take precedence over all other values, which creates great armies of the excluded, and an economic, social, and cultural environment that is not life enhancing but life degrading.
However, human values can change; they are not natural laws. The critical issue is not technology, but politics and leadership. The great challenge of the twenty-first century will be to change the value system underlying the global economy, so as to make it compatible with the demands of human dignity and ecological sustainability. Indeed, as we show the world here in Porto Alegre, this process of reshaping globalization has already begun.
Fritjof Capra, Ph.D., physicist and systems theorist, is a founding director of the Center for Ecoliteracy in Berkeley. He is the author of several international bestsellers, including The Tao of Physics and The Web of Life. This talk is based on his new book The Hidden Connections: A Science for Sustainable Living. www.fritjofcapra.net