ABSTRACT
The goal of this chapter is to articulate the narrative which contextualizes, rationalizes and supports a sustainable society, a narrative capable of achieving unity of purpose and coalescing public opinion on a concrete plan to achieve genuine sustainability. We approach this by exploring the infrastructure that will be required to implement the economic model of Natural Capitalism (Chapter 3). Infrastructure in the relevant sense is about more than the hardware; it is about the organic and symbiotic relationships among the various elements of the infrastructure and our social, economic and political institutions. As such, the infrastructure shapes these institutions and restructures our economic and social relations to one another.
From this discussion of the infrastructure of a sustainable economy and the implications for the organization of our social and economic institutions and our relations to one another, we can extract the outlines of the narrative of sustainability. This narrative will emphasize valuing nature in itself and not merely because of some instrumental value it might have for us. Looking forward, this will require us to adopt what has been called “Biosphere Consciousness” – the recognition that we are members of the community of life on the same terms as all other organisms.
