What does it mean to Thrive Authentically?

We live our purpose and earn a living without destroying the environment and our fellow humans. This pursuit helps us meet all our human needs and wants: physical and mental health and safety, economic security, and a sense of value and belonging.

The climate is changing, causing increased temperatures and disrupting weather, ecosystems, plants, animals and people across the planet. Climate change is overall a bad thing, especially for the most vulnerable of us who don’t have the resources to fight against climate change while they’re still wondering how to get food on the table and pay the electricity bill. HUMANS are the main cause of climate change, through things like burning fossil fuels and corporate agriculture, and HUMANS are what’s going to solve this problem. 

We have to mobilize everything at our disposal to preserve our climate for current and future generations, or we will constantly be dealing with the next climate crisis. And in the meantime, we’re going to make basically everything better, make people and wildlife happier and healthier, and bring more power and knowledge back into our own hands. We all can exercise our right and responsibilities to embrace this future, and we all will benefit from seeking this future. What happens next is up to us, as in every single one of us. We have to be aware that it’s an uphill battle.

• Don’t expect corporations to jump up to clean up their acts to save the world; they have a bottom line and most of them prioritize shareholder wealth at any cost to their fellow humans or the environment.  A company cannot be said to be “thriving authentically” if they don’t pay their employees’ living wages while soaking their executives’ and shareholders’ bank accounts.
• Some countries are even celebrating climate change and all the new oil and product delivery routes that will open up because of the melting ice (we’re looking at YOU Russia). Your country is not “thriving authentically” even if you have high rates of development but have to destroy the environment to do it.
• The oil, gas, coal, rail and auto industries have known for decades that fossil fuels are damaging the planet and they’ve been doing everything they can to cover up the truth and sell more and more, just like the tobacco companies did. Obviously there’s nothing authentic about their intentions, and the only ones “thriving” are the high-paid executives and shareholders.

We need big changes, and change is hard. People are not going to change unless they want to change. We have been taught a lot of things that are wrong in that they cause harm, but we can learn new better ways of doing things. If we learn we can do things we love without causing harm, and these are things we want to do, we can make changes. So we can create a future where we understand how our decisions affect our carbon footprints, and make changes for the better.

In The Climate Economy, we can all thrive authentically: ourselves, our lifestyles, our businesses. We envision a prosperous, sane, smart future, based on truth and cooperation with attention to the climate, the economy and humanity. We will  work to empower every single person to discover their purpose in order to be happy, healthy and productive on their own terms. Change can be scary and hard, but it can also be a good thing. We accentuate more jobs, clean air, a thriving economy, and happy people in control of their own destinies. We eliminate harmful greenhouse gas emissions, mindless destruction of nature, and greed at the expense of healthy people and environments.

We are just at the beginning of an exciting new story for humanity, where everyone can thrive authentically. This is going to be fun.