Collective Action Step 9:
Protect, steward and build resilience where possible into the rest of the natural environment (water, soils, and its life, other species and its ecosystems), with enforceable international laws. Part of these protection laws would be directed at slowing and reducing the ongoing destruction of the environment and bio-systems.
The preceding mandate for protecting the environment also implies that we need to always treat environmental pollution as theft --- either a misdemeanor or felony depending upon its scale, frequency and harmful impact! It is the theft of the health and resources of those (both currently alive and future generations), whose existing health and resources (to clean it up), will eventually be depleted by it.
The planet is loaded with toxic dump sites and other heavily polluted areas loaded with carcinogens and other toxins that will harm the health of the general populations closest to it for generations to come.
This step also means that we will need to demand common and aligned national and international pollution and sustainability laws that consistently enforce full pollution cost capture (one key aspect of triple bottom line full cycle accounting, see above step), by the source of the pollution so that ALL must comply. Without these enforceable national and international pollution laws, those individuals, businesses and nations who can still pollute without penalty create unfair economic advantage (profit) for themselves and steal the health, quality of life, and economic viability from those that they are polluting.
Always treat pollution as serious theft from the economy, community, nation and from future generations. Creating enforceable international pollution laws to protect the environment is one of the most important points for the long term success of sustainable prosperity as a new way of life. (The reasoning behind its importance lies in the fact that clear laws and consistent enforcement are the essential and necessary structure needed to deal with both ignorance and our primal overriding self interests.
In evolutionary systems, self-interest is the dominant driving force and motivation for the parts of whole systems. We as individuals are part of the whole system known as humanity.
The new consistently enforceable pollution laws must be designed so well that the most ignorant and selfish person among us will want to live in a sustainable prosperity lifestyle because the negative consequences are so swift and certain that there would be an immediate reduction in achieving their self interests by not following these wise laws. There is no other consistently effective way to achieve long term success for humanity's sustainability than to have these enforceable and aligned national and international pollution laws to combat natural ignorance and expedient self-interest motivations.
While we are creating micro-cultures of sustainable prosperity, we must also change the national and international laws of the macro-culture if our new micro-cultures of sustainable prosperity are to survive and replicate themselves.) (If you are spiritual in nature, also treat pollution as a moral wrong and a sin at various scales.)