It’s time for Doughnut Thinking. The old mindset of economics has run its course and needs refreshing. The planet demands it and our very survival as a species depends on it.

Continuing to believe that we will simply return to the old way of doing things when the latest crisis is over is deluded thinking. In just the last six months we have seen the planet rocked by extreme weather events from devastating fires in Australia to Atlantic storms and unprecedented flooding across parts of Europe. The melting of ice at our polar regions is increasing at an alarming rate, with the hottest ever temperature on record for Antarctica having been recorded in February 2020. As I write, the world economy has been brought to its knees by a virus that has spread around the world at lightening speed, a consequence of our economic globalization. Meanwhile, refugees, across all parts of the planet, continue to gravitate toward areas where they believe, rightly or wrongly, that the prospect of survival for their families will be vastly improved. They are moving away from famine and drought, from war and terrorism, from dictatorships and oppression. And, who could blame them?

There is no ‘normal’ that we are going to return to. These events, these crises, these acts of desperation are only going to increase and become ever more ‘normal’.

And that is why humanity needs to totally re-think its relationship with the planet and with each other. It simply does not have to be this way. If we stubbornly hold onto our old economic route map, and blindly ignore new avenues that have opened up since it was printed many years ago, we will miss the opportunity to discover ways to recover from the chaos and unintended consequences created by our insatiable hunger for ever-increasing economic prosperity.

I turn the remainder of the blog over to Kate Raworth. She is worth listening to and I sincerely hope that her ‘doughnut thinking’ will be taken seriously by as many economic influencers as possible. Time has run out for second chances. It is time for new thinking and it is time for the old guard to move aside.

What on Earth is the Doughnut?…