The need for balance

The virus-crisis forces a politically polarized world to re-think and re-valuate. Perhaps the crisis is an opportunity to build a bridge between opposing views and between the present and the future. The vision of one of Europe’s leading environmentalists, German politician Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker.

After a prominent career in science and politics as a pioneer of sustainability spanning almost five decades, Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker is looking for balance—balance between humans and nature, between short term and long term, and between public and private interests. He is convinced that humanity can only truly achieve sustainable, just and inclusive societies—or even survive—if people are able to leave their dualistic perspectives behind. It’s not black or white, or good or bad; it’s both, von Weizsäcker says. In his new book Come On: Capitalism, Short-termism, Population and the Destruction of the Planet, co-authored with co-Club of Rome president and Swedish politician Anders Wijkman, von Weizsäcker calls for a new Enlightenment.

His perspective is refreshing and inspiring albeit almost naïve in a time when politicians want to build walls and aim for protection of “old-fashioned” national interests. But it is not innocent idealism that has brought Von Weizsäcker to his vision. It is the unavoidable outcome of years at the forefront of innovation and groundbreaking thinking.

Twenty-five years ago, as the founder of the German environmental think-tank the Wuppertal Institute, von Weizsäcker—with fellow American environmental scientists, Amory and Hunter Lovins—published Factor Four: Doubling wealth, halving resource use. The book introduced the concept of “resource productivity”. The message was that we can do so much more with what we already have. Amory Lovins used to say: “We can find more energy in the attics of American homes than in all the oil buried in Alaska”. “It is still true”, von Weizsäcker reflects but he concludes that, apart from a few examples—like the LED light revolution—, the projected resource productivity revolution has not taken off and the evolution of planet Earth is still on a collision course with the future of humanity. 

“Here’s the problem”, von Weizsäcker, who was a member of the Bundestag for the social-democratic SPD from 1998 to 2005, explains over the phone from his home in Germany: “Politicians go to international climate conferences and continue to sign important conventions with wonderful commitments. Then they come home to their capitals—from Quito and Bangkok to Berlin—and they conclude that these commitments are horrendously expensive and that they need a lot more economic growth to pay for them. We seem good doctors regarding the diagnosis, and terribly idiotic doctors regarding the therapy. The therapy we are applying makes the disease a lot worse.”

The simple message is that good ideas will not lead to the necessary solutions unless we are able to build a bridge between opposing views and between the present and the future. And, in von Weizsäcker’s vision, that’s first and foremost a philosophical challenge. The rationalism of the Enlightenment, led by philosophers such as Descartes, Kant and Hume, inspired an explosive development of science and technology in the 18th century and laid the foundation for the progress of the Industrial Revolution. ‘The Age of Reason’ freed the individual from suffocating pressures of churches and kings. However, rational thinking also became dualistic, divisive thinking.

The frustration that many increasingly experience in today’s political debates and that has contributed to the rise of the protest politics that caused Brexit and brought Donald Trump to power, is directly related to the rational dualistic thinking of the Enlightenment. Von Weizsäcker: “In today’s political struggles, one side typically finds one truth important and the other side qualitate qua the opposite truth”.

“People in the West fail to understand the balance between two truths. 

“People in the West fail to understand the balance between two truths. If a person in the western world hears about a conflict, the automated response is: one guy is right, the other is wrong. In the West, the search for truth means finding the arguments to beat the other who is wrong. If you present exactly the same conflict in India, China or Japan or elsewhere in Asia, the first response is: ‘Well, of course, both are right.’ The true search for truth is about finding an appropriate balance.”

That’s why there’s a need for Enlightenment 2.0 driven by a kind of inclusive rationalism. “We need some Asian virtues”, von Weizsäcker says. That doesn’t mean that he sees role models in autocratic leaders as China’s Xi Jinping and India’s Narendra Modi. “The politics in Asia are not worth copying, but people in Asia understand the need for balance.”

 In today’s reality, von Weizsäcker’s desired balance means not a choice between the protectionism a la Trump or the free trade as advocated by multinational institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF). “I’m not proposing anything like ‘anti-democracy’, ‘anti-freedom’. I’m certainly in favor of international trade and international business, but we need a more reasonable balance between the public and private domains. We can’t make our societies dependent on the stress provoking regime of the quarterly financial reports demanded by the stock exchanges. And, we need to include the public good into the calculations of profit.”

 For von Weizsäcker, the new Enlightenment begins with a reassessment of the values behind today’s dominant capitalist thinking. In the preface of his new book he explains the title Come On, as “C’mon, don’t try to fool me”. “We don’t want to be fooled by outdated philosophies”, von Weizsäcker and Wijkman write. They make a good case that three often-quoted giants of the market economy, Adam Smith, David Ricardo and Charles Darwin, today are—conveniently—only being partially understood (see excerpt on page XX). Their true message was far more inclusive, or “balanced” as von Weizsäcker would argue. Darwin knew that it was important to limit competition to protect the weaker. Smith argued that the geographical reach of the law should match the geographical reach of the market. Ricardo advocated comparative advantages in the interest of all, not absolute monopolist advantages with winners taking all.

Can we make timely adjustments? Europe’s eminence grise of sustainability pauses a moment before he answers the question: “Pessimism doesn’t make anything better. So, I don’t mind people calling me an optimist.” He hastily adds that his optimism should not be confused with the optimism as a chauvinistic, patriotic duty that Ronald Reagan introduced in the United States as part of a new right-wing mindset and which echoes in Donald Trump’s populism: “I find that absolutely disgusting”.

Von Weizsäcker lists a few recent encouraging political developments: the election of French president Emanuel Macron who came to power with a clear pro-European integration agenda, and the new socialist prime minister in Spain who is inspiring his country—and Europe—with an open mind on immigration as well with his proposal to transform the valley with dictator Franco’s grave into a deconsecrated mausoleum for victims of fascism. Further away, he notes the elections in Mexico that brought to power a new president focused on driving out corruption. “Both on the right and on the left, I see strong movements to reign in financial markets. That was not the case before the financial crisis of 2008. There is a growing conviction that financial markets have to be weakened. They are too strong.”

He also encouraged by the decision of a court in San Francisco to punish agricultural company Monsanto, owned by German pharmaceutical giant Bayer, and give $289 million to a man who got cancer from the Roundup weed killer. “I would not have predicted that half a year ago”. The San Francisco ruling follows a ruling by the European Court that powerful genetic technologies require technology assessment before application. Von Weizsäcker: “We need to restrain these really dangerous manipulations of life and require stringent technology assessments. So, these are very good developments that support my optimism and with the help of a new Enlightenment we have a good chance of changing things.”

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