On a fevering planet with finite resources, growing inequality, narcissistic CEOs, tech bro megalomaniacs, and corrupt governments it will be difficult to build a good life for everyone. We’ve always had the means, skills, and brains to create a just world, but our collective hate, greed, and selfishness constantly gets in the way.

“Humankind” doesn’t accurately capture our essence. There is, however, a two-word phrase that could help unleash some much-needed kindness and fairness: consumption corridors.

A 2021 research paper outlined the relatively new concept as minimum consumption standards that allow every individual to live a good life and maximum consumption standards that guarantee the chance to live a good life for others.

Minimum consumption standards would ensure individuals living now or in the future would be able to satisfy their needs. It would safeguard access to the necessary quality and quantity of ecological and social resources. Maximum consumption standards would be needed to ensure that consumption by some individuals doesn’t threaten the opportunity of a good life for others.

As “Sesame Street” tired to teach us, sharing is caring.

The space between the floor of minimum consumption and the ceiling of maximum consumption would produce a sustainable consumption corridor, according to the paper’s authors.

The concept is simple, at least in theory, and the idea has moved from the fringe. In all fairness, human societies should guarantee a floor of consumption that secures a decent life for everyone, while also setting a ceiling beyond which consumption undermines planetary boundaries, such as climate stability, healthy ecosystems, and clean water, air, and soil.

Basically, an NBA salary cap, without all the mind-numbing permutations.

Consumption corridors would help create the social change needed to make living well within limits a reality for everyone. Such a human construct would also protect the welfare of nonhuman life, of which we need to survive.

“This framework links sustainability with fairness, acknowledging that people living in poverty should not be asked to consume less, while those with far larger ecological footprints may need to scale back,” Peter Sutoris recently wrote in Undark.

The climate crisis and resource depletion are facts of life we need to aggressively address, for ourselves and future generations. We need to act now. Ignoring these problems, minimizing the damage they have and will cause, and/or lying about their existence, simply rewards the wealthiest among us. The Epstein Files crowd.

Climate scientists have estimated that changes now across sectors such as agriculture, construction, energy, and transit could reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by 40% to 70% by the 2050s.

Across the acidifying pond, policymakers and lawmakers in Europe have begun to explore how consumption corridors and other 21st-century ideas, such as extended producer responsibility laws, could be incorporated into housing and building policy. For example, the idea of placing limits on the size of new homes in wealthier countries has been studied and discussed.

But as governments begin turning ideas from theory into policy, a more difficult issue emerges, according to Sutoris. Who gets to decide where the floor and ceiling should be set, and for whom?

“That question matters because environmental limits are not just technical decisions — they are political ones,” Sutoris wrote in his opinion piece. “Across many democracies, sustainability measures increasingly face resistance, not because people reject environmental protection outright but because they experience it as something imposed from above. In this political climate, sufficiency can either deepen suspicions of bureaucratic overreach, or it could offer a way to reconnect environmental policy with democratic decision-making.”

The only solution is the latter, if humans are to survive in something more than a digital hellscape.

Sutoris is correct about our collective skepticism of government from above. It’s well deserved. Government and the free market largely created the crisis we are simmering in. The answer, however, also lies with government and the free market. But it starts with us.

We need to elect trustworthy, ethical people who aren’t running because they: crave power and attention; want to enrich themselves and their cronies; want to terrorize people of color; want to turn the United States of America into a fascist regime; are ring-kissers and traitors; and/or support corporations and technologies that profit from the stolen goods and labor of others.

We must elect people who campaign for environmental protections; support extended producer responsibility; prioritize public health; who will hold Big Oil, Big Plastic, Big Finance, and Big Tech accountable; are committed to investing in decarbonization; actually want to serve the public; and understand and acknowledge the need for progressive ideas such as consumption corridors.

To do that, we need people with those traits and priorities to run for office — locally, statewide, and nationally. It’s not easy, as dark money, special interests, and ignorance too often rule the ballot box.

The organization Run for Something works to help get such people elected. It’s motto gets right to the point: “You Can Change the System by Changing Who’s In It.”

“Politics is stuck on repeat,” according to the nonprofit. “The same older generation calls the shots, and the people making the rules don’t look like the people living under them.”

While far too many of the people making the rules, especially at the national level, don’t respect or care about their constituents, their distain for the natural world runs just as deep.

The only way forward is to make corruption and hate the exception, not the rule.

Frank Carini can be reached at [email protected]. His opinions don’t reflect those of ecoRI News.