The Economy is Fatally Flawed

The Errant Bottom Line: It’s not Money – It’s Ecology!

The economy is fatally flawed. Our economic system left in place unchanged, will lead to our own demise. The fatal flaw of our economy is that it’s driving force of maximizing short-term profit and growth on a planet with finite resources is ecologically irresponsible. This ecological irresponsibility is so flagrant and blatantly evident that the environment and all the services it provides are considered as externalities to the economic system. This is to say that the life support systems of Earth are ignored, taken for granted and uncared for by our societies’ functioning. This is absurd, crazy and wholly unacceptable.

We need a new paradigm to replace this misdirected distortion that the economy is driving societies’ functioning , leading us all to our extinction if we pass the point of no return that is rapidly approaching in respect to crossing ecological thresholds. We need to respect life and all relations and conform to Natural Ecological limits which define what the Earth can provide for us without continually depleting natural capital and degrading the interrelated web of ecological systems that sustain human life now and we require to maintain for the continued survival of future generations. We need to replace our central focus on economics with a central focus on ecology, and this is the challenge of our times.

If the economy and our societies’ functioning is ecologically irresponsible, then the paradigm shift required must be one of Ecological Responsibility (ER). Yes this is an emergency and we need ER firmly in place to replace short-term economic growth and profit so as to create a process of Environmental Social Change (ESC). Yes we need to escape from the dead-end route we are collectively travelling and steer away from our own extinction, now, before it is too late.

But how?.

If we break down responsibility we get response-ability and this is something each of us and all of us can do if we focus upon it. We can all respond with our abilities and we have so, so many abilities, for we are expert, adaptable, multi-talented beings imbued with the big brains and digital dexterity built to survive. We have done so throughout the history of existence in order to survive and we have been successful at it. Humans live all over the planet in every corner, in every conceivable environment. But Humanities’ fatal flaw in entrusting our evolution to a paradigm that ignores Natural structure, functioning and the limits imposed by ecology is leading us to dead-end. So we need to respond with our abilities to ecology. Eco-Response-Ability (ERA) is the new paradigm needed to address the emergency (ER) and escape (ESC) from our extinction.

We need ERA now!