Value Earth: Economy Versus Ecology
Why is the planet dying? To use a popular cliché in political circles, "it's the economy, stupid!". The economy is like a ravenous beast that must keep being fed the world's resources and must keep growing. The beast was born when humans made the switch from primitive hunter-gatherer lifestyles, a time when we had the highest levels of leisure time, fewest psychological disorders, most social bond between people (being kin based, not money based as now) and greatest freedom, to the innovation of an agriculturally based society. Agriculture allowed for a larger population and led to the first civilizations. Civilized society requires organized government. Next, money came into the equation, with issues over how wealth should be distributed to make society work.
Free market capitalism is the perfect system for ruining the Earth. It's like a black hole, sucking everything in. Countries compete with each other to offer the most attractive conditions for corporate investment: cheap labor, minimal restrictions on environmentally (or socially) damaging by-products of industry. If one country tried to unilaterally impose restrictions, its economy would suffer immensely as it would lose its competitiveness and, in addition, become vulnerable to foreign offensives, since its clout in the world would be so much reduced.
Pandora's box has been opened, we are trapped as if in a burning building, with no easy way out. The corporations, who have bought our corrupt politicians, seem to be prompting them, behind  the scenes, towards the most sinister "solution" imaginable: that only a uni-polar world order, with one authority to regulate all nations can bring the runaway unsustainability to a halt. The very cause of the crisis is offering to save us all!
Forests are being cleared, soils are eroding, wetlands disappearing, droughts causing water tables to fall, fisheries are collapsing, rangelands are deteriorating, rivers running dry, temperatures rising, coral reefs dying, ice-shelves melting and species going extinct. Such is the human consumption of the planet's finite resources, that it has been predicted (as reported by the BBC) that a new planet would be needed by 2050. Realistically, since this cannot happen, the prospect is that we will be hitting a brick wall at high speed before then.
Almost everyone accepts that world over-population is something that must be dealt with, yet nothing is ever proposed. And "green economists" bizarrely value human life so highly that they are nothing but traitors to the ecology they pretend to care so much about.
Nature herself seems to offer the best, if not the only, hope. Some sort of immune response, such as a plague, is overdue now. Humans need knocking off their pedestal. They are not holy or sacred, but more like lice upon the Earth. People must get back to the laws of Nature and common sense. The belief that humans can manipulate the planet without putting anything back or preserving an equilibrium is the biggest error in history. The only way forward is a future in which short-term selfish profit is replaced by sustainable living and a holistic perspective of the world.
by Victoria McMagnus
June 24, 2007
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