Consumption and Growth; OR Wise and Humble

Consumption isn't what it's cranked up to be.
An excellent article by John Coulter a Beijing-based independent Australian researcher collaborating with Tsinghua University and China Agricultural Unversity.
http://www.cdeclips.com/en/opinion/fullstory.html?id=20036

"If the economy is now a mindset of financial solutions, hope is in vain. The word we should be grasping for is humility.

At the Boao Forum, the President of Mongolia was one speaker who struck on this theme. What conventional economists call consumption and growth needs to be appreciated as wise, economical, and yes, humble."

How true...

"A 1997 article in Nature estimated the value of the annual services of Natural Capital (the services Earth provides free to the Real Economy) is about double the global GDP.

No way can we ever dream of paying back, we are just depleting it. There is no way the air and ocean can purify the CO2 that comes from 18 billion tons of fossil fuel burned just in 2008.

It is like 10 people living and smoking in an elevator for a week. You want to try throughputting all that?"

How sad...