At the root of the human problem lies human nature and faulty economic theory. It's one thing to intuitively understand that the system is not sensible, but it's entirely another problem to appreciate why and how to fix it. I start with two key ideas: The economic system operates inside the environment and must be secondary to the environment.
The money we use is fraudulent. It's a rubber measure, that distorts our decision making and destroys real value.
In early 2009 I thought the coming depression was already here. I wrote a series of essays about that. My concern was that the entire emphasis was on restoring the old order, not on fixing the obvious problems. We get what we measure, and when GDP is the measure we create wars, and destroy the Earth, in order to create jobs. I guess one can argue that "restoring the old order" worked. But it still makes no sense, and the fundamental problems remain. Here is a link to that thinking; Depression Economics.
Denis Meadows and I share an age. In our lifetime 96% of all the petroleum every used was sold. In the next 20 years oil production may fall to 50% of current output. But industrial output is predicted to double. Something is wrong here. What will that do to a society that's dependent on oil? There are big, unpleasant economic changes coming. We can avoid the worst of that if we act now.
Denis Meadows talks about the need to make the necessary transition to a different sort of non-growing economy possible, without "collapse". We need to take difficult social decisions today, if that is to be possible.
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