What bothers me is that he doesn’t offer a plan to find the Promised Land! Come to that, neither does anyone else, so this is not a pop at Sir John’s intellectual rigour. And the fact that the idea and the language presented comes across as evangelical, suggests that politics and economics are not the best place to start from. Maybe we need religion here?

Perhaps I am now too old and cynical but when were politics and economics ever interested in fairness and equality? All religions seem to pay lip service to such concepts but all seem to become corrupted by power, influence and cash over time. Boiling down the concepts of all major religions leaves “Be nice to each other”, so all of the other trappings of religion just strike me as “noises off”.

Now “ Be nice to each other” is a concept I can believe in, as I have long believed that good works are their own reward, but we now crash into the major conflict between the physical needs of the humans on the planet, the allocation of resources, (food, water, energy, space), the effective pressure groups, (politics, economic forces, social convention), and the ultimate needs of the planet.

Assuming that a quasi-religious stance would be a more effective driver to a non-materialistic future, we need to define the precepts of a religion. So, let’s start with -

(a) Profligate use of resources for any purpose is morally bankrupt
(b) Claiming that a resource is abundant is NOT an excuse, (human foresight is generally considered rubbish, so an absolute ban is easier).
(c) Having control of a resource does not make you morally superior, merely the servant of humanity
(d) Your worth as a human can only be measured in terms of your contribution to society as a whole, not the size of your bank account, house, stuff, attractiveness of your trophy partner etc.

If anyone can develop this to a more coherent concept, then please do, for the good of humanity and your personal fulfilment of item (d)!