New Wise Response Manifesto Released

Manifesto of the Wise Response Society

The Wise Response Society asserts that profound changes in global priorities and respect for the biosphere are essential for humanity to endure well into the future.

Our Current Crisis

1.  Existential Threats: Our current way of living causes unprecedented exploitation and damage to critical resources and the biosphere, upon which all life depends.

2.  Scientific Evidence: Extensive evidence shows that human activities create severe existential risks, including the climate crisis, biodiversity loss, resource depletion, and pollution of land, water, and atmosphere. This results in ecological overshoot.

3.  Ecological Overshoot: This state, caused by exceeding natural limits by an ever increasing population, is global, vast, and accelerating. If not reversed, it will cross irreversible ecological tipping points and will render Earth uninhabitable for humans.

Our Path Forward

4.  Solution: The only reliable solution is a swift and huge reduction on demands on natural resources and ecosystems, restoring safe limits and regenerative capacities.

5.  Fossil Fuels: Fossil fuel use drives economic activities that cause overshoot, with the climate crisis as a pressing symptom. Reducing fossil fuel use is crucial, as it is the main contributor to global heating as well as other forms of biosphere disruption.

6. Global Dialogue: Urgent global dialogue is needed on sustainable population sizes, consumption levels, and technology, which are key ecological impact factors.

Our Goals

7.  Biosphere Integrity: To continue complex life on Earth, prioritizing biosphere integrity must be humanity’s overarching goal, requiring economic and political system restructuring.

8.  Resource Distribution: Equitable distribution of Earth’s finite resources within biophysical limits is vital. Meeting universal basic needs, rather than market desires, minimizes demands on nature and maximizes life satisfaction.

Call to Action

9.  Democratic Participation: New democratic participation forms are needed to overcome political polarization, realign priorities, and correct our trajectory.

10.  Government Leadership: We are calling on all New Zealand governments to accept this challenge and lead by adopting and promoting these priorities:

• Establish biosphere integrity as humanity’s top priority, replacing the focus on exponential economic growth.
• Urgently eliminate ecological overshoot.
• Restructure economic and political systems to prioritize equitable satisfaction of universal basic needs. In the New Zealand context that requires the application of the principles of the treaty of Waitangi.
• Broaden public participation for a deeper understanding of and commitment to these challenges. Current propaganda promoting an unsustainable future has to end.

Our Vision

11.  Better World: We believe in a better world where the biosphere sustainably supports humanity’s basic material needs. Achieving this requires re-examining our cultural values and priorities for genuinely fulfilling lives and a future with promise. We believe broad public participation in this realignment of overarching priorities is essential.