The scarcest resource may be the willingness to listen to each other

—Andy Duncan

One reason people look at sustainability in different ways may be that we have different world views that influence how we look at anything.

Donella Meadows, the lead author of influential books titled The Limits to Growth and Beyond the Limits that used a computer model to look at sustainability, took a stab at color-coding world views and exploring how they might influence outlooks on human population growth and planetary limits. She published the work as "Seeing the Population as a Whole," an article in the June 1993 issue of The Economist, a British magazine.

Later, writers Paul Hawken and Amory and Hunter Lovins boiled down Meadows’ color-coding of world views to the following:

• Blues are "mainstream free-marketers" with a positive bias toward the future based on technological optimism and the strength of the economy.
  
  
• Reds represent "the sundry forms of socialism. Although one might expect them to have been discredited by the downfall of the Soviet Union, their world view is very much alive," strengthened by developments such as the severe problems that "bandit capitalism" has brought to Russia and by a growing gap around the world between rich and poor. Reds sometimes see environmental issues as distractions from "fundamentally important social issues."
  
  
• "Greens see the world primarily in terms of ecosystems, and thus concentrate on depletion, damage, pollution, and population growth. They focus on carrying capacity and want to bring about better understanding of how large the economy can grow before it outstrips its host." Greens may view technology as a tool to reduce human impact. But "they are often portrayed as caring less for people than animals ...."
  
  
• Whites are the synthesizers "and do not entirely oppose or agree with any of the other views. With an optimistic view of humankind, they believe that process will win the day, that people who tell others what is right lead society astray." Whites believe "environmental and social solutions can emerge only when local people are empowered and honored."

In her article, Meadows wrote that while people with differing world views tend to make their cases on population issues with tactics such as calling upon their own "biased experts," she was more interested in "how their arguments overlap—and are coming together."

A sample of her thoughts on that:

"The Greens are correct: Population growth causes people to level forests and overgraze lands and exacerbates poverty. The Reds are correct: The helplessness of poverty creates the motivation for parents to have many children, as their only hope of providing for themselves. The Blues are right: Economic development can bring down birthrates. The Whites are right: Development schemes work only when they are not imposed from on high."

"The scarcest resource is not oil, metals, clean air, capital, labor, or technology," Meadows concluded. "It is our willingness to listen to each other and learn from each other and to seek the truth rather than seek to be right."

For more on this topic, visit:

• Donella H. Meadows