{"id":59717,"date":"2021-10-07T07:16:38","date_gmt":"2021-10-07T12:16:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=59717"},"modified":"2021-10-07T07:16:38","modified_gmt":"2021-10-07T12:16:38","slug":"unrelenting-economic-growth-on-a-finite-planet-is-laying-waste-to-entire-living-systems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=59717","title":{"rendered":"Unrelenting economic growth on a finite planet is laying waste to entire living\u00a0systems"},"content":{"rendered":"

Unrelenting economic growth on a finite planet is laying waste to entire living\u00a0systems<\/a><\/h3>\n

Meanwhile, governments everywhere are talking about \u201csupercharging our economy.\u201d \u2014<\/strong><\/p>\n

No 2784 by fw, October 5, 2021\u2014<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

George Monbiot<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cThere is a box labelled \u2018climate\u2019, in which politicians discuss the climate crisis. There is a box named \u2018biodiversity\u2019, in which they discuss the biodiversity crisis. There are plenty of other boxes, such as \u00a0pollution, deforestation, overfishing and soil loss, gathering dust in our planet\u2019s lost property department. But all these boxes contain aspects of one crisis, that we have divided up to make it comprehensible. The categories the human brain creates to make sense of its surroundings are not, as Immanuel Kant observed, the Thing-in-Itself. They describe perceptual artefacts, rather than the world. Nature recognizes\u00a0no such divisions. As Earth systems are assaulted by everything at once, each source of stress compounds the others\u2026. What would we see if we broke down our conceptual barriers? We would see a full spectrum assault on the living world. Scarcely anywhere is now safe from this sustained assault. A recent scientific paper estimates that only 3% of the Earth\u2019s land surface should now be considered \u2018ecologically intact\u2019. \u2026We have no hope of emerging from this full-spectrum crisis unless we ramp down economic activity. Wealth must be distributed \u2013 a constrained world cannot afford the rich \u2013 but it must also be reduced. Sustaining our life-support systems means doing less of almost everything. But this notion \u2013 which should be central to a new, environmental ethics \u2013 is secular blasphemy.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0\u2014George Monbiot<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

George Joshua Richard Monbiot is a British writer known for his environmental and political activism. He writes a weekly column for The Guardian, and is the author of a number of books.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Unrelenting economic growth on a finite planet is laying waste to entire living\u00a0systems Meanwhile, governments everywhere are talking about \u201csupercharging our economy.\u201d \u2014 No 2784 by fw, October 5, 2021\u2014 George Monbiot \u201cThere is a box labelled \u2018climate\u2019, in which politicians discuss the climate crisis. There is a box named \u2018biodiversity\u2019, in which they discuss […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[72,30675,2327,6112,391],"class_list":["post-59717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-biodiversity","tag-citizen-action-monitor","tag-finite-planet","tag-george-monbiot","tag-growth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=59717"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59717\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59718,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59717\/revisions\/59718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=59717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=59717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=59717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}