Towards an eco-surplus culture

From market failures to vulnerabilities and logical flaws of ‘artificial’ environmental protection systems

Abstract

Following the Paris Agreement, global actors intensified climate action through ambitious pledges, financial alliances, and investments in green technologies. However, despite continued rises in atmospheric carbon concentrations and global temperatures, a series of structural regressions have emerged, exposing the deep vulnerabilities and inherent flaws of artificial environmental protection systems—systems predominantly shaped by mainstream economics’ growth-oriented and technology-centric paradigms. This paper, grounded in Granular Interaction Thinking Theory (GITT), seeks to uncover the logical flaws embedded in such systems. It explains how they perpetuate the illusion that perpetual economic growth is compatible with environmental protection through prioritizing investment in advanced—yet often costly, low-impact, and highly uncertain—technological solutions. This bias also results in an overdependence on a limited range of technologies, heightening the risk of economic bubble formation and immiserizing growth. To address these systemic shortcomings, we advocate for the adoption of the semiconducting principle of monetary and environmental value exchange. This principle ensures that environmental values can be translated into monetary values, but not vice versa—thereby preventing monetary valuation from undermining ecological sustainability. Operationalizing this principle effectively requires the cultivation of Nature Quotient (NQ) across society and a broader socio-cultural shift toward an eco-surplus culture, in which environmental protection, restoration, and regeneration are not peripheral trade-offs, but foundational preconditions for long-term economic resilience, political stability, and social well-being. Such a profound transition will inevitably increase systemic entropy—manifesting as uncertainty and disruption across established socio-cultural and political patterns, norms, and structures. Accordingly, this paper also explores the major challenges that may hinder the emergence and diffusion of an eco-surplus culture, as well as strategies for addressing them.