Doing the Work

This "work" in climate change action refers to the final step in the six stages of grief, as outlined by Daphne Wysham. It appends the traditional five steps of grief, as originally described by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, and adapted by Steven Running with a final step in the process which calls for appropriate response to the acceptance of a lethal global problem.

This becomes a call to adapt a different benchmark for health and success on a global scale. Specifically, it is about replacing the outmoded and destructive measure of GDP with a measure that recognizes all risks and impacts of business, environment and public policy. This measure is proposed as GPI, and it is laid out extensively in this article from The Solutions Journal.

The state of Maryland has developed a Genuine Progress Indicator as a model for implementation. It's an accounting change that forces the negative impacts onto the balance sheet, and thus doesn't rely on monetary compensations for carbon emissions, but rather fundamental and behavioral and economic changes. This affects corporate behavior at a basic accounting level, which is the necessary means of changing the destructive nature of human habitation which is currently based upon a false metric.

Global implementation of this metric, preferably within regional groups, would put the world back on a path to ecological salvation. The benchmarks provided by C&C would establish a fair set of guidelines. This needs to be done soon, before the escalation of carbon emissions runs out of control.