Re: ESA policy statement on economic growth.
"The problem is not economic growth, per se, but the ways in which it is implemented." However regrettable it may be, it may be necessary to say this, if for no other reason than that the real core truth can only be reached, as a practical matter, with such a statement as a means of helping the Big Exploiters save face and lead them beside the still waters which they, too, must drink when their RO system needs a filter change. Sometimes the art of such statements consist of such. (I couldn't do it, but I'm glad someone can.) WT PS: At the level of ecosystems, anthropogenic predation switched to exploitation at The Dawn of Culture. It has been increasing for some ten or twelve thousand years or so now, with the curve going toward exponential around 5,000 years or so ago BCE. I have long made the distinction between predation and exploitation, even to ecologists, but often without much effect. I think it is crucial; many others do not--in fact, many believe there should be no distinction at all or that they are synonymous. As mere predators, we were social, cooperative. We feasted upon the fruit of the land, and our population curves tracked those of our prey in the usual offset fashion. With culture, with CULTIVATION, we started robbing Peter to pay Paul. Rather than shifting ourselves to match the habitat, we started shifting the habitat to match us--and our fantasies. Hence, Fantastic Homo sapiens, a real cartoon character, self-writ. The fantasy has "gone critical," as they say about nuclear reactors, but FHS has not adopted critical self-examination in a sufficiently significant way. Sociopaths have "gone critical" in the sense that they have completely lost the ability to be critical of themselves. We are all infected with the sociopath "virus," with varying degrees of infection and effects. As social animals, we are, by definition, asocial when we fail to cooperate in terms of the welfare of our species rather than the individual, and we see a false inconsistency when we think that individuals must be sacrificed for the welfare of the group. "All for one and one for all" has fallen into disfavor--"all for me" is the center of our present fantasy, with, of course, the notable minority that still retains a significant social impulse. It is this "meat" upon which "our Caesar feed[s]." The "Caesar's" among and within us. The Caesar Virus. Cultures (cultivators) require slaves. Some many must toil that others may enjoy excess. Our social impulses are strong, however, and to the extent that are able to overcome cultural authoritarian hierarchies, progress has been made. Literal slavery has largely been abolished, yet obeisance to hierarchies rather than the social structures that produces pulling together for the common good have preserved the net effects through consumerism and other "sharing of the spoils" of exploitation, aka, "economics." Ecology is "house-understanding." Economics is "house-numbers." We presently live in a mix shifted heavily toward the latter. We have long lived in such a mix, and we are still struggling with this dichotomy. We SUBORDINATE house-understanding to house-economics for short-term gain (exploitation) at the expense of long-term sustainability. Ain't them big bubbles IMPRESSIVE though? ###
