Introducing a new Substack writer

Meet Andrew Welsh on The Value Crisis

“Andrew Welch is a Guest Lecturer to the Masters of Development Practice program at the University of Waterloo's School of Environment, Resources, and Sustainability.

Founding facilitator of an officially designated Transition Town in Erin, Ontario – part of the international Transition Town Network. He is now on the Board of Directors for the esteemed Canadian Association for the Club of Rome. (The Club of Rome's 1972 "Limits to Growth" report is considered pivotal to the modern environmental movement.)

Andrew Welch's groundbreaking Aanimad Assertion on Climate Change presents a new and staggeringly important shift in how society must view and respond to Climate Change. He puts it into the proper framework of ecological overshoot, and examines the root causes of our crisis. Turning popular thought on its head, audiences come away with an opportunity to completely rethink the role of nature in our species continuance.” (Source: https://thevaluecrisis.com/SpeakEnvironment.htm)

Two Books - - The Value Crisis - - Our Second Chance

Links: https://substack.com/@thevaluecrisis

In perhaps the best Substack post ever, “What is the Value Crisis,” Andrew Welsh concludes with:

“The idea of the Value Crisis is an assertion that the greatest threats to humanity can be primarily attributed to the excessive precedence of number-based values. Our society has arrived at a state where quantitative values (such as money) consistently trump qualitative (life-based) values, which has led an existential crisis. Major impacts of the Value Crisis are a breakdown in the integrity of our ecosystem (manifested by what is known as ecological overshoot), and crippling inequities and decline (collectively called sociological shortfall). The first is directly caused by our obsessive application of the flawed core concept that "More is Always Better"— a concept that defies natural laws. The second shares the same origin, with the additional consideration that quantitative value systems tend to be zero-sum games. When what you value is countable, then a gain on one side is typically reflected as a loss on the other. In contrast, qualitative values are often rooted in relationships and sharable win-win successes.

An understanding of the difference between quantitative and qualitative value systems is pivotal to moving humanity to our next level of progress (and even surviving our current state). The Value Crisis is a metacrisis (fundamental to more visible crises such as climate change and social inequity) which can only be solved by restoring qualitative values to having an equivalent precedence over quantitative values, when appropriate.”

Do read his whole article, even if you have to re-read some sentences to “get it.” These qualitative values, the great immeasurables, are reflected in the desires to gain a better understanding of collective social success, such as a quality of life index rather than GDP (Gross Domestic Product). See - https://www.numbeo.com/quality-of-life/rankings.jsp - and - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality_of_life - and - https://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/

These considerations of “how much is enough” are also part of Charles Hugh Smith’s writings, do look at that link as well.

All these considerations are difficult in a human population with perhaps a decreasing level of free will and moral agency, in finding any balance between human existence and sustaining the natural world which used to contain it. As it stands, this civilization continues to exceed, in total disregard, essential planetary boundaries. It is totally shocking how City Life drifts back to its disgusting “normal” soon after any supply disturbance, rather than take that opportunity to do a strategic reset to better accommodate planetary health. Above that is the overreach of “Progress” with inexcusable Space programs producing more Space junk and contaminating the atmosphere, AI development and ever more armaments developments. But the real “meta-crisis” underlying even this Value Crisis is the bare fact that humans are not a domesticated species and have failed the pre-requisites for the establishment of an actual civilization. Until that error is resolved, possibilities for ending perpetual wars, ending nuclear weapons and utilities, establishing international boundaries and solving numerous social issues remain futile distractions until workable international governance is achieved (this is but one planet).

All these posts are mirrored on my web site at https://www.mccroskey.ca/limitstoprogress.htm Note that Substack only counts this as “read” if you click on the title and view in your browser. If you don’t dislike this post, click on “Like,” this gives a higher-ranking in substack search.