Time for a little humility
June 29th, 2008 by Jim JustThis excerpt from an article by David Korten in Yes! Magazine (reprinted at Alternet) sums it up pretty well. We in the U.S. have accumulated a lot of bad karma.
“Cheap oil provided an energy subsidy that defined the wars, economies, settlements, values, and lifestyles of the 20th century. The result was a century of wasteful extravagance and inefficiency that encouraged us to squander virtually all Earth’s resources — including water, land, forests, fisheries, soils, minerals, and natural waste recycling capacity. We are now waking up to the morning-after consequences of a brief but raucous party. These include depleted natural systems, unsustainable economies, an obsolete physical infrastructure, and a six-fold increase in the human population dependent on the diminished resources of a finite planet.”