Galileo’s Recant

I overheard someone being referred to as successful today.  This observation was supported by the fact that the person in question owned a number of properties, a profitable business and had accumulated a noteworthy amount of money. There was no mention of the person’s health, happiness, non-fiscal accomplishments or the business’s social or environmental impact.  The ‘naturalness’, and general acceptance, of this attribution of the ‘successful’ moniker is an indication of how entrenched monetary value systems are in capitalist societies. The subtlety of this is that there…

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The desire and expectation to live at the current unsustainably high level of consumption is the root of the environmental issues we are facing.  It is a simple equation of the rate of consumption exceeding the ability of the earth to provide resources and receive waste and emissions. Efficiencies gained from technological advancement are not sufficient to offset increased consumption.  Western levels of consumption will have to decline, either through deliberate considered steps or painfully forced by degradation of the environment.