Reconceiving "Good Life"

My previous article “Facing the reality of fossil fuel economy and climate change" discussed the ubiquity of fossil fuels in everyday life. Fossil fuels fuel our cars, factories that make stuff, farms that feed us, and the economy on which we all depend. Can we wean ourselves from “oil addiction”? Not easily.

Yet, the greatest threat facing humanity is climate change. As atmospheric carbon climbed past 400 parts per billion, we have entered unknown territory. Many people, myself included, have difficulty facing what climate science demands of us. We have difficulty imagining, let alone embracing, the radical changes to economies, consumption patterns, and political systems necessary if carbon emissions are to be sufficiently reduced.

Why does our imagination fail in this way? One reason is that reduction in fossil fuel consumption will lead to economic de-growth. It goes against prosperity and threatens our notion of a “good life,” the kind of life most consider worth living.

But consider that Homo Sapiens have walked the earth for 200,000 years, and that fossil fuels revolutionized industrial production only in the last 200 years or so. It is remarkable that our notion of “life” has evolved to be so completely entwined with petroleum that we have a hard time imagining living without it.

Matthew Huber’s book Lifeblood details the petroleum industry’s efforts to saturate American life with petroleum products and to shape the country’s cultural politics toward neoliberal values such as privatism, individualism, and consumer choice. Petroleum became the material and energetic basis for entrepreneurial life, home ownership, auto-mobility, and the nuclear family.

Americans take pride in the myth of “self-made” individuals. But this “hard-earned success” and affluence today seems inconceivable without petroleum and petro-economy. The petroleum industry has successfully equated opposition to limitless petroleum consumption with opposition to cherished national ideals. Unfortunately, this insidious view is not confined to the United States, but has been embraced worldwide.

To adequately address climate change, it is vital to recognize that the neoliberal ideal of life based on selfish, individual advancement does not serve us well. We have become lonely, dissatisfied individuals trying to accumulate material wealth and out-compete each other while destroying our health and our planet.

Fortunately, humans are hard-wired to be caring, kind and compassionate, a fact confirmed by scientific studies by Dacher Keltner at the UC Berkeley. Healthier visions of the good life—ones that emphasize love, community, solidarity, compassion, and generosity—have been cherished in much of human history and many cultures. These visions and values must be nurtured to vitality to counter the “survival-of-the-fittest” narrative.

Humans have deep yearning for empathy, connections and belonging to something bigger than individual selves. When we connect with this core yearning and unleash our creativity and compassion, I believe the world has plenty of resources and ingenuity to blaze a new, healthier path for humanity, take care of all beings, and heal the planet.

Fortunately for our island communities, many neighborhoods, groups and individuals have courageously blazed the trails in various areas not because they are the easiest paths, but rather because they resonate with our deeper vision of the world, of “good life”. From organic farming, to various conservation efforts, to Lopez Take-It-Or-Leave-it, when people join hands to manifest their visions of individuals, communities, and economies coming into alignment with nature, we will experience the true, lasting fulfillment of lives well-lived.