Global ecological sustainability is imminently threatened by a massive ecological bubble.
Global terrestrial, atmospheric, aquatic and marine ecosystems are no longer adequately intact to maintain conditions for life
The web and hallways of power are abuzz with the promise of green technologies to fix the financial system, solve climate change, all while providing jobs.
Who can be against green jobs? Yet in this single-minded pursuit of the holy grail of green growth, we are putting all our money and efforts into reforming an economic system whose dysfunction -- equating growth based upon ecosystem destruction with progress -- is precisely why we find ourselves in twin crises of growing poverty for the formerly affluent, and collapsing global ecosystems.
I am against green jobs, if the emphasis upon jobs includes more economic growth on the back of ecosystem harm. Nothing grows forever. And certainly not industrial and speculative capitalism which kills all it encounters through explosive growth. Economic stimulus is like feeding a cancer cell. There are few new wildernesses to liquidate in order to bump up GDP, and more growth is not the answer to anything but protecting the narrow interests of the ruling elite.
We are not going to grow our way to ecological sustainability. Simply, a Green New Deal that focuses upon economic stimulus to promote more growth without providing the necessary additional supportive policies necessary to rein in consumption, natural resource use and ecosystem destruction will make things worse.
In just over three hundred years, the world has experienced explosive growth in population, consumption, resource extraction and loss of ecosystems.
Industrial capitalism is based not only upon institutionalizing massive economic inequities; it is also dependent upon the three lies of endless: 1) growth, 2) extraction of resources from, and pollution into, natural ecosystems, and 3) technological innovations
The house of cards is coming tumbling down. Perhaps by spending trillions to subsidize consumers to spend ever more to buy crap on credit they do not need, and that comes from destroying the Earth, a few more years of growth can be coaxed from further diminishing an exhausted Earth. But now, or in the near future, this ecologically terrible economic system is going to collapse. I have said it before and I repeat, if humanity and the Earth are to survive, it would be much better if the current system collapses sooner rather than later.
Unbridled, aggressive and speculative economic growth at the expense of natural ecosystems, is precisely what brought us to this world of over-population, inequitable consumption, economic failure and ecosystem collapse in the first place
Please note the patently obvious observation that nothing grows forever. The shared root of humanity's current ecological and economic crises is our addiction to growth -- namely economic, population and consumption on the basis of liquidation of natural capital.
We know we must reduce human population and inequitable consumption.
We still have the power and time to stop the ecological bubble, but just barely.
Renewable energy is about more than jobs. It is about saving a habitable Earth.
What if ecological sustainability requires less growth and thus fewer jobs? It must be done anyway
There is something deeply duplicitous in plans to reduce greenhouse gases by restoring the rate of growth of wealth and energy consumption. The public is profoundly detached from the reality of looming ecological limits. Most regularly treat economic growth and ecological sustainability as each being matters of independent debate, displaying profound ecological ignorance, and deep unawareness that both take place in a finite physical world that connects them.
We must understand that no amount of green jobs will allow conspicuous consumption to continue.
Economic growth will end regardless, perhaps now, but certainly soon
The world is in a pre-apocalyptic condition where advocacy and policy is not keeping up with the science and ecosystem collapse.
The Earth System is failing as the result of too many people consuming too much.
The global economic system has reached a point where the government is using tax money to pay consumers to consume.
A heavier human presence upon already overburdened global ecological systems will not solve economic or ecological problems for long. There is not enough natural capital for needs for growth and desired consumption by all the people that are currently here, much less all those that are expected.
Governments are scared as they realize they cannot keep the lights on. The world is about to descend into a scramble for survival
We are determining now with our environmental advocacy whether the world collapses into unruly anarchy, or just changes to a different, simpler way of living. Either way, change is coming.
There will be no continued human social progress, and perhaps not even existence, if we continue an economic system based upon growth from liquidating life giving ecosystems. The only true new green deal is getting people back to the land making something of value from protecting and restoring intact ecosystems. In striking the balance between green and jobs, we have to err on the side of green every time, or there will be NO jobs or anything else for that matter.
Affluence based upon over-consumption of natural resources from liquidated ecosystems is not a birthright, it is a death wish
If expectations are that "green jobs" will allow us to consume and procreate as we have been, then there is no benefit for environmental sustainability. The measure of a new green deal is not primarily the number of jobs created, it is whether global ecological collapse has been averted and the foundation for long-term global ecological sustainability achieved.
Read the entire article
http://www.newearthrising.org/2009/03/continued-industrial-capitalism-is-assured-death.asp and then read
http://www.newearthrising.org/2009/03/the-rise-and-fall-of-man.asp Our mortality is the thing we understand from the time we become aware. We will all die. This is our underlying strength and overriding weakness.
Man’s design flaw was built in. You and I cannot be sustained forever. Is this why we have designed all other things to follow the same principle? Designed for Demise. Take care of today, tomorrow will look after itself.
The financial crisis has happened before, as it is happening now. It repeats a pattern and is a simple example of how we illogically sleepwalk down a well trodden road to nowhere. Man has evolved into an invasive species that unlike all others that survive on available and sustainable resources, cohabitating in balance with others, we consume out of balance with the laws of nature. We change the natural environment to suit, not just our needs; but our wants. We consume. We consume out of balance to the point of extinction not only of all other ecosystems on which we also depend on for our own survival, but soon to the tipping point where it will be written ‘The Rise and Fall of Man’.
From the time in history when we changed from hunters and gatherers, we have designed out sustainability. We have discarded any guidance that was provided by nature, which is the model of sustainability, in favour of a redesigned manmade finite future. The demise design selected wasn’t planned by our ancestors with malice but we continue to follow it illogically and at our ultimate peril.
All species of plants and animals adjust to their natural environment, living in a sustainable way on available natural and renewable resources; if they don’t, they perish. If they are invasive and consume more than the natural environment can continue to provide, they are doomed.
Finite resources means going, going, gone
From the time of the first unnatural activity design, we have continued to build on what is a basically flawed process. Even though we can look back and see the outcome for past civilizations whose over consumption of resources caused their ultimate extinction, we choose the same outcome. Our activities are not designed according to the laws and guidance of nature
We are good at looking back, not forward. We react to issues, not to seeing them coming. It’s not our fault, just our training. Live for today, tomorrow never comes. Don’t worry about it, it may never happen.
As I look around me, and you can do the same, everything I have has come from our collective finite resources. It’s nearly all extracted, milled, mined, distilled and depleted from fossil and finite resources, unsustainable and designed for demise.
We are on a freefall to the unknown and the ground is rushing up to meet us. Like all freefall, we are accelerating as we descend.
We are not in for a soft landing that we can walk away from; we indeed may arrive at terminal velocity.
Future generations will not have the resources on which we have built the industrial and economic model of the developed and developing nations. They will need to survive without them and adapt their lives to survive. They will need to develop infinite and sustainable systems. They will have no other choice. If they do not adapt they will perish
Future generations will not have the resources on which we have built the industrial and economic model of the developed and developing nations. They will need to survive without them and adapt their lives to survive. They will need to develop infinite and sustainable systems. They will have no other choice. If they do not adapt they will perish
Mankind as a species is not living in a sustainable way, we are doomed and we will destroy the rest of the planet along with ourselves 
