Achieving proper balance in life and society is to some extent the ultimate goal in human life. Not letting your work or your play time or anything else take over your life is a challenge that everyone deals with. Prosperity would be ubiquitous if people could only accord the proper level of interest to all of the right things. For our world and our class there are three things to be balanced: the economy, the society and the environment – the triple bottom-line.
As great as it would be forget about this balance, unfortunately that option is out. Disregarding the environment is poisoning our very existence but without an economy and the ability to purchase what we need to survive humans also face dire problems. Unfortunately perfectly satisfying any of these without disregarding the others is impossible; ultimately sacrifices need to be made. Only with a healthy balance of each of the three is sustainability possible, and when introducing other sets of threes, such as the differing interests of individuals, corporations, and government, things get far more complicated. Once again however balancing these differing interests is essential.
Truly the only way change is possible is through submission to a social contract by everyone from all of their different roles. Agreements such as Kyoto may not have been completely successful, sadly in part due to reluctance from our own United States, but it is these types of measures that will make change ultimately possible. When looking at basic game theory you can see that while it is in everyone’s own best interest to act with the environment in mind, as long as it the individuals own role is not the tipping point they won’t care; someone else will do it.
Bloomberg has done a lot to force people into acting in their own best interests between the soda ban, the indoor clean air act and countless others, and while I can absolutely understand the argument from those opposed there is no other way to see real change. Humans are not and never have been a species with especially strong self-control and much of our animalistic lack of processing still adversely affects our society. As I’ve discussed before truly most of the world’s environmental problems stem from seeing problems from a limited scope, for if an issue such as fracking were examined from a scope of a hundred years rather than 5 years (if that), the logical course of action in choosing to benefit the environment would be obvious. Sadly however, that is just not how humans seem to think.
Creating a social contract makes people follow what is in their best interest even if it isn’t for their immediate benefit, for it is for the benefit of society and as members of society, themselves. To truly deal with all parts of the triple bottom line, society must come to a consensus and agree to stick to it, electing a higher power to manage them. Sadly the harsh polarization in our current political world makes this easier said than done but hopefully when this disruptive trend comes to a close and the dust settles our government can see the importance in works such as the Kyoto protocol and more generally in balancing environmental interests with economic ones.
