Feasta today described the Irish Budget 2013 as yet another wasted opportunity to address our urgent environmental and social challenges. A true budget is one which balances not financial income and expenditure but human and ecological needs.
The debate surrounding the budget was characterised by a false choice between ‘austerity’ or ‘growth’. In fact, neither option is viable. Instead, what is needed is a radical re-structuring of our economy to ensure that we live within ecological limits in a just manner.
The urgency of this has never been more apparent. Climate change is firmly underway, resource constraints are more apparent and the fantasy that we can have endless economic growth is more clearly illusory than ever before.
Today’s budget was constructed within an out-dated and dysfunctional mindset. The false choice between ‘austerity’ or growth is blinding us one more time to the true choice before us – that between genuine sustainability or not. The greatest challenge before our societies remains to see our world as it is rather than through the distorting lens of a dominant ideology which believes in infinite growth within a finite planet.
A new economic and social model is required. For its part, Feasta will continue to develop and present ideas and models which sketch out a resilient and sustainable world. We call on all political representatives to become planetary realists rather than economic growth fantasists.
For further comment please contact media@feasta.org.
Image: “Way wrong”. Source: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1285254 . Author: Jason Staten
