Enough! is a belief, a response and a call to action
We believe that inequality, oppression, injustice, power and climate breakdown are all connected by the same story: that the economy must keep growing – no matter what the cost.
We believe that growing our economy is costing us our future. This story of growth is so embedded in our ways of living that any kind of change demands the complete re-imagination of our society. We believe that not only is this possible, it is now essential.
We believe that environmental action must challenge economic growth. We need a different story.
You see, you and me, we are the economy. We make it grow.
Through our choices and actions in our everyday lives, knowingly or unknowingly, we help make this story a reality. We are told that we must buy more stuff. Consumption means growth, and growth means jobs; and jobs – no matter how meaningless they are or unhappy they make us – are how we contribute to society and the economy. We work and we consume, endlessly.
But we’ve had enough.
We are consuming resources faster than they can be replenished and we are pushing our planet’s capacity to its limit. In our lifetimes, this will have a massive disruptive impact on our society and on the way we live; on our food, and on the air, water and soil we rely on. If we want to avoid huge disruption, we must change the way we think about living, working and distributing resources.
To change anything, we need to change everything. And we need to do it now.
We’ve had enough of living lives we are told should be making us happy, but instead make us feel more precarious, more overworked and more stressed than ever before. We’ve had enough of feeling alone, of feeling the constant struggle, no matter how hard we work or how much we have. We have woken up to the fact that one person’s poverty, another person’s overwork and more extreme weather are all connected, because we understand that our economic system and climate crisis are fundamentally linked.
THERE IS ENOUGH!
There are enough resources on this planet for everyone to live well, but our society and economy is currently structured to mean that we can’t and won’t all share equally. This is why a smaller number of people are getting more, and more of us are getting less. Less public services and a lower quality of life. The facts are that 26 people have more wealth than the 50% of the world’s population and in the UK, 10% of the population have 45% of all wealth.
There is enough for all of us.
There is enough if our policies and institutions change to ensure that our society works for everyone. If we reclaim our ability to manage our shared resources like water, healthcare, housing and transport, for the public good and not for private profit. If we ensure that the poorest and most vulnerable in our society are well supported and can access what they need and those of us who have more than we need, take even just a little less. If we invest in our connections and relationships, instead of working o consume and invest in material possessions. If we choose to measure the success of our countries by collective happiness and well-being, instead of GDP.
There is enough if we recognise that what we, in Scotland, eat, buy and do every day, impacts on people in countries around the world, and if we recognise that we all share responsibility for ensuring our lifestyles don’t come at the cost of lives which seem far away.
WE ARE ENOUGH!
This is our call to action.
The story of more growth isn’t working any more.
It’s time for us to reorganise our society and economy so that collective resources are managed for the benefit of all people and the planet. It’s time to start understanding how much better our lives would be if we reclaimed our ability to help each other out. If we chose to own less and live more.
Together, we are enough.
Together, we can find ways to move through times of crisis and beyond. Communities all over the world, whose systems and services continue to fail and oppress them, prove this to be true every day.
In choosing to create a different story, a story of enough for everyone, we are taking on the unchanging stories of systems and structures old and new and (re)imagining possibilities.
…ARE YOU IN?
Do you have a question?
See how we can make a difference together