Interview with Roman Krznaric: “Humanity has colonized the future, as if it were a distant colonial outpost devoid of people”

How can we think long-term in a short-term world? We spoke with Roman Krznaric, leading philosopher and author of the book “The Good Ancestor” (available in Spanish from Capitán Swing) about the challenges facing our planet and the need for a change of mentality that takes into account future generations.

—What does it mean to be a good ancestor?

Back in the 1970s the great immunologist Jonas Salk, who developed the first polio vaccine, asked the question, ‘Are we being Good Ancestors?’ He wanted us to think about how we will be judged by future generations for our destructive actions, such as the damage we are doing to the environment on which all life depends. I believe that Salk’s question remains crucial today.

Never in history have our actions had such potentially damaging consequences for future generations, from the impacts of climate change to the risks of artificial intelligence.  To be a good ancestor is to recognise that we need to expand our time horizons, and not just think on a scale of seconds, minutes and hours, but on a scale of decades, centuries and even millennia. It is about escaping the pathological short-termism of today’s culture and taking the long view.

The workers who started building Valencia Cathedral in the thirteenth century had this kind of long-term vision. They probably knew it wouldn’t be finished within their lifetimes, yet they remained dedicated to their task. We need this kind of ‘cathedral thinking’ today. Though we probably have enough cathedrals now and should be building the ‘ecological cathedrals’ of the future.

 

—If we continue on this path, how do you think we will be remembered by future generations?

We will certainly be remembered as carbon criminals. I have 14-year-old twins and they are already judging me! They ask me, ‘How could you have taken so many aeroplane flights in the late 1990s when the world already knew about the climate crisis and the Rio Earth Summit had happened in 1992?!’ I try to explain that it took time for the message to sink in – and my kids don’t think this is a very good excuse.

They are right to judge us because the path we are currently on is the same one that the Roman Empire was on – heading towards civilizational breakdown. We know that, with business-as-usual, we are heading towards something like 3-4 degrees of heating and 1-2 metres of sea level rises – and maybe even more. We have knocked ourselves out of the stable Holocene era and have become the weather makers. The tragedy is that we can’t say, ‘we didn’t know’. We know. That makes us responsible.

 

—With an ecological crisis and hunger figures continually rising, why do you think we are still not thinking long-term?

There are lots of reasons why we are still caught up in short-termism, what I call ‘the tryanny of the now’ in my recent book The Good Ancestor (published by Capitán Swing). These range from the ‘attention economy’ of the digital world that keeps us swiping and checking notifications on our phones to the short-termism of speculative capitalism and political systems that run on short-term cycles, where politicians can barely see beyond the next election, or even the latest tweet. So shifting towards a long-term civilisation means challenging the fundamentals of our economic and political systems.

We need to shift, for instance, towards post-growth economic models like ‘doughnut economics’ or the wellbeing economy model. It’s good to see cities like Barcelona adopting the doughnut economics model, for instance, which is about leaving behind the old ambition of constant GDP growth and replacing it with a model of thriving in balance, where we aim to meet people’s basic needs without pushing our societies over ecological boundaries.

 

—What exactly does long-term thinking imply in terms of food? What should we improve?

I am convinced that a smart starting point for long-term thinking about the provisioning of basic needs like food and water has to begin with the fundamentals of ecological economics. Herman Daly, one of its founding fathers argued that a long-term sustainable economy is one that doesn’t use more resources than it naturally regenerates, and doesn’t create more waste than it can naturally absorb. This is the basis of creating the kind of regenerative economies that we urgently need.

Of course, we are currently doing the opposite – using around two planet Earths every year in terms of our ecological footprint. So we need to be thinking about ensuring that our food systems operate strictly within planetary boundaries.

There are lots of different ways to confront this challenge, from hugely cutting down meat consumption to more technological approaches such as precision fermentation, recently argued for in the excellent book Regenesis by the British environmental writer George Monbiot. Beyond the policy level, we need to be imagining that our children and grandchildren might still be alive in the year 2100 and what kind of decisions we need to make today to ensure that they have a regenerative food system.

 

—What about the most vulnerable people?

I believe that humankind, particularly those of us living in the wealthy countries of the Global North, has colonised the future. We treat the future like a distant colonial outpost, devoid of people, where we can freely dump ecological degradation and technological risk. The tragedy is that future generations aren’t here to do anything about this colonisation – so it is up to us to give them a voice. It is clear that the impacts of this colonisation fall disproportionately on the Global South, who will face the biggest impacts of an ecological crisis that in historical terms is primarily the responsibility of the Global North.

The evidence of this disproportionate impact is already here of course, from floods in Pakistan to drought in Kenya. We would be wise to draw on indigenous ideals, such as the Native American idea of ‘seventh-generation decision-making’: making decisions looking up to seven generations ahead. This is the kind of long-termism that can help us be Good Ancestors for all of humanity, particularly the most vulnerable populations.

 

—Do you think that the 2030 Sustainable Development Strategy (SDGs) is a product of a short-term vision?

I think the 2030 Agenda, and the SDGs that frame it, is far too limited and remains caught up in a short-termist worldview. This is fundamentally because SDG 8 still prioritises ‘economic growth’ as a global ambition. Yet we know that there is no systematic evidence that we can have economic growth while reducing our carbon emissions and material footprint at anything like the speed and scale required to stay below 1.5 degrees of heating – what’s technically called ‘sufficient absolute decoupling’. It’s a mythology. There is no such thing as ‘sustainable growth’.

Even when my children were five years old they knew that you couldn’t keep blowing up a balloon bigger and bigger without the prospect of it popping at some point. And yet the SDGs still sell this idea that our economies can keep growing and growing. Although we have to recognise that low-income countries may need growth to meet basic needs, there is absolutely no reason for this in high-income countries. It is essential that we prioritise post-growth economic models in both the Global North and South. I hope that whatever comes after the SDGs will do this.

 

—Do you think we are failing as a global society?

Of course we are failing as a global society. The changes that we have been making, such as slow shifts towards renewable energy and more sustainable agriculture, are merely incremental and nothing like the radical transformations that we clearly need. For instance, by 2050 there will be 120 million extra tonnes of humans on the planet, but 400 million extra tonnes of livestock. We obviously need to fundamentally curtail our addiction to meat – but it is barely happening, partly because of the huge political power of corporate agriculture.

On the other hand, I see glimmers of hope. More than 40 cities, for example, have adopted the doughnut economics model that I mentioned earlier, from Amsterdam to Thimbu in Bhutan and El Monte in Chile. There are the seeds of a regenerative economy slowly emerging.

 

—What do you mean when you say that we need a rebellion of time?

I have been studying processes of social transformation for more than three decades and one this is quite clear: that it is rare to have rapid transformative change without disruptive action from below. We urgently need radical social movements to be shaking up our political and economic systems so that we can kick-start the changes we need, such as a regenerative economy and food system. That’s the lesson of history, from the slave revolts of the 19th century to the civil rights movement in the 1960s. That’s why I personally support and take part in direct action movements like Extinction Rebellion.

I think of these kinds of organisations, and all of those that are dedicated to taking the long view of humankind and the planet, as ‘time rebels’. They see beyond the here and now. They recognise that it is collective not individual action that we need. They understand that change requires disruption. We don’t have time for gradual transformation. The ecological tipping points are already too dangerously close and may have already been crossed, from collapsing ice sheets to thawing permafrost. Now is the moment for transformation. Time Rebels of the world, unite!