Failed Responsibility

Having failed the most important test of political responsibility in our lives, we the citizens of the United States are now coping with the aftermath – both socially and environmentally. 

Those of us living with the mistaken belief that "personal responsibility" without societal correction is the key to a better future seem willing to tolerate the consequences of disabling the most powerful tools of that correction, governments, with the faith of a spoiled child that an omnipotent parent – either a deity or an economic force – will prevent the worst of those consequences.

Meanwhile, the rest of us must soon, if not already, deal with the reality we helped create, and continue fighting to slow the global trajectory of death and destruction that is by now inevitable. That fight requires enforcement of honest accountability for how people's actions impact others, and promotion of valuing life above everything – including pursuit of possessions and life-devaluing status – that are stealing or degrading the resources vital for its continuation.

A mix of two strategies for avoiding harm (confrontation and mitigation), this approach assumes that people are capable of changing their motivations sufficiently to cause an appreciable slowing in both consumption of critical resources and competition over what's left. To the extent that such a capability does not exist, for example due to innate biological or psychological limitations, then success will be limited. Current behavior as an adaptation to past pain may also be a limiting factor, though some change might be accomplished with a more measured, compassionate approach.

Other countries are trying their own strategies, in part by legacy (they're stuck with what they have) and in part by experimentation. Like a worldwide game of musical chairs, we're all doing what our experience and judgment guides us to do; and like that game, we'll have to live – or die – with responsibility for the result.

Declaration of War

Yesterday, the president of the United States issued what was, in effect, a formal declaration of war against life on Earth. In a speech based more on ideology than reality, he firmly placed the economic growth of the United States based on fossil fuels as a higher priority than trying to limit the high risk of extinction imposed by one of the most destructive consequences of using those fuels: global climate change.

Substantively, it wasn't a surprise. By word and deed, economic dominance over the world has been the primary goal of the president and his supporters, as a natural consequence of placing one group as "first" and insisting on increase of exponential growth by that group. The main topic of debate has been more around who is really in the group than what its goals are.

Dominance of one group over one or more others without their consent falls within any reasonable definition of "war." Humans have been waging war on other species for millennia, and by now have essentially won. Those who prefer domination over other people have been waging the more familiar kind of war for just as long, but on average have been kept from lowering the overall population by accessing more resources; but now that critical resources are becoming scarce on a global basis, that is about to change.

Those of us preferring coexistence tend to value life over personal power, and have attempted to delay that change for as long as possible. This has been done through development of agreements like the Paris accord and the development of new technologies to get more utility out of remaining resources without causing more damage in the process. Climate change has achieved its current priority due its potential, now actualizing, to reduce resources faster than we are consuming them, taking control out of our hands and forcing competition into primacy – with inevitable, deadly effect.

For several years I have had a creeping feeling of dread, like others whose opinions I have read and discussed personally. This has come from study, analysis, and experience in my own environment as the evidence of growing damage to the world has become pervasive. For some reason I can't yet fathom, the president's decision to openly step away from global cooperation to deal with climate change, even in a largely symbolic way, has amplified that feeling to the point of alternating depression and rage. Dealing with that remains the focus of my creative writing, and is fueling my personal drive to resist in every way that matches my values as the environmental and social crap storm that is now defining our lives continues to grow in intensity.

Use It Or Lose It

Waste ultimately is created by expending effort and using resources without benefit to you or anyone else, or so that your actions cause harm or death in any timeframe. If you value life, then waste is bad by definition. If you make or acquire something and don't use it to benefit you or others, then to be good you must lose it – convert it into a form that isn't waste, or give it to someone who will use it appropriately.

My New Year's resolution was to reduce waste, personally and in general, embodied by the phrase "use it or lose it." In the worst case, it keeps new waste from being generated; in the best case, it increases the net amount of benefit in the world. Knowing how much discretionary time we have provides a means for determining what we can use, what to lose, and what we shouldn't make or acquire. If the actions we take during our work time create waste, then we need to change what we do for work; and since in most cases what we do for work is traded for things we acquire for personal use, we should find less wasteful ways of acquiring those things, including making them ourselves.

I personally like to read, watch TV and movies, and listen to music. Even more, I like to explore, daydream and assemble thoughts in writing, take photographs, and create music. Obviously I can provide much of my own knowledge and entertainment without acquiring it from others, thus reducing personal waste. Waste can be reduced further by trading what I create with people who don't have those skills (or the desire, resources, or ability to develop them) in exchange for things and experiences I can't or choose not to develop on my own. In that case, I have gained benefit already, and am creating a chance for the effort to accrue further benefit for someone else.

Paradoxically, forcing everything to be subject to trade, as is the trend here in the U.S. and with international trade agreements, promotes the chances of more waste being generated. The reason is that trade, to be profitable, exponentially increases consumption by enabling more people to consume, and each person to do more of it (by increasing the efficiency of converting resources into products). Consumption, as I define it in my research, is the conversion of resources into forms that cannot be used as resources by natural systems over a period of a year (which from an ecological perspective is "waste"). Creating something for your own use is less likely to be as efficient (in the economic sense), and your consumption – including generation of ecological waste – less likely to grow exponentially.

Ideally, each of us would create what we need, and then sell (or otherwise trade) what we can't gain benefit from, either in the process of creation or changes in what defines "benefit" in terms of what we created. We would use the proceeds to buy what we need but can't create on our own. Anything left from transactions would be converted into resources that can be used for other purposes by us or other species.

My personal application of "use it or lose it" is likely to be more practical than ideal, enabled by a simple change in expectations and a process of testing. Anything new that I create, such as a book or music track, will need to be personally satisfying in its creation and its usability, thus achieving a minimum degree of benefit. If possible, it would also preempt consumption of something similar from another source that would provide an equivalent amount of benefit. This would be my minimum acceptable expectation for creating it, and is totally under my control. If in the process I have to learn something, including a new skill, then the benefit of that learning would be factored into my expectation. What I create would be offered to others as a gift (such as this blog post) or for trade (such as a book) if there is a good reason to believe they would benefit from it and if any costs involved in the gifting or trade can be recoverable in either the satisfaction of gifting or the value of what was received in trade (otherwise the cost would be waste, so this assumption will need to be tested).

I plan to give away or trade things I currently own that cannot be expected to provide any future benefit to me (thus "losing" them). Like with new things, the costs should be recoverable as satisfaction or in what was received in trade. Throwing something away is committing it to being waste, and will be avoided if possible, such as by trying to give away or trade its parts (essentially, recycling). For things I've been selling that incur periodic costs (such as distribution of music), I will use testing to find justification for future costs (such as others benefitting from them), and will discontinue them if justification can't be found; otherwise the costs would qualify as waste.

"Use it or lose it" is a good rule to promote as well as to practice, which is why I'm discussing it here. The minimum benefit from doing so is the feeling of developing and shaping potentially meaningful and useful ideas. The greatest benefit would be evidence that I am contributing to my primary value: maximization of life's ability to survive and thrive for as long as possible.

Two Stories

My efforts to explain and project global trends in population and consumption have yielded two competing stories about the past and our potential future. With critical new insight about the second one emerging from work over the past week that may have reconciled the two, this is a good time to summarize them.

The stories are based on several key observations. First, happiness (life satisfaction) varies predictably with the amount of resources people consume, as measured by their ecological footprint, with smaller and smaller increases in happiness as consumption increases, approaching a maximum amount as any one person approaches consumption of the output of Earth's entire biosphere. Second, there is a minimum amount of such resources each person needs to survive. Third, the population of an average other species decreases linearly with the total amount of resources that humanity consumes. Fourth, global economic activity is proportional to the square of the product of population and happiness, which I interpret as transactions of artificial environments that provide happiness. Fifth and finally, in small groups life expectancy increases with consumption much as happiness does, while in large populations it varies with the total resources consumed by the group.

The first story comes from mathematically simulating "worlds" that each represent a point in time with a certain population, ecological footprint, and total amount of resources. A world can only "exist" when: (1) the resources consumed by the population is no greater than the total resources; (2) an average "person" consumes no less than the minimum; and (3) average happiness is less than the maximum. As total resources decrease, the number of worlds decreases, and the remaining worlds are clustered around more restricted combinations of population, ecological footprint, and happiness. Using historical data to identify the worlds occupied by humanity over time, it appears that as our species has consumed more resources, it has targeted the most dense concentrations of remaining worlds, with the objective of occupying as many worlds as possible without decreasing population in the process.

Behind both narratives is a more conventional backstory. All species collect and recycle energy and material, using it to exist as long as possible and to maximize the propagation of their forms over time and space. As the distribution and types of energy and material change, they adapt by changing their behavior and their form (evolving). From the perspective of members of any one species, other species either assist them, impede them, or are merely parts of their background environment that may assist or impede them later. "Assistance" can understood in economic terms as the provision of products and services, collectively considered as "resources" that include food (a primary source of energy and material) and purification of water (processing a resource for use and eliminating threats to survival), and those resources can be provided either on a continuous basis or a one-time basis. "Impeding" includes removal and degrading of resources (or the species that provide them) and, of course, being treated as a resource yourself. Happiness, as experienced by us and possibly other species, is a consequence of the degree that an individual's environment is optimally suited to maximize personal longevity and propagation of the individual's unique characteristics, and increasing it means using as many resources as possible.

The second story begins with two people, each using the minimum amount of basic resources (such as nutritional food, water, and breathable air) needed to live long enough to produce two more people and keep them alive long enough to survive on their own. Those resources are provided by a core set of other species ("supporters") which are doing the same thing and consuming resources supplied by another set of species ("producers"). For the system to last a long time, the supporters and producers must be allowed to reproduce so that their populations remain at least constant, otherwise the amount of resources drops, as do the populations of the creatures that depend on them – especially us.

Consuming the minimum amount of basic resources corresponds to a minimum level of happiness and lifespan, since none is left over for significantly altering an individual's environment beyond providing basic needs. The creation of physical and social technology (such as economics), especially since the beginning of civilization, has enabled the use of more resources as well as other types of resources besides the basic ones. This has translated into increasing happiness, longer lifespans (due to better health care, protection from predators, and a more reliable food supply). It has also supported larger populations, whose labor and ingenuity (higher probability of smarter and more capable people being born) has reinforced technology creation and use.

While we've so far protected the species that provide basic resources, we've consumed more than what other species produce, and have been consuming members of those species themselves. This consumption has included conversion of source material and energy into forms ("waste") that cannot be recycled by other species in a timeframe useful to humans, and may be harmful to them, even to the point of killing them off.

This brings us to the most important aspect of the second story. Humanity is now on the verge of consuming the producers that keep the supporters alive. Keep in mind that only the basic resources keep us alive and healthy; the other resources increase the quality and length of individual lives, and they enable growth in population by getting access to more resources. What will happen next?

In the first story, humanity is forced to retreat to a lower-consumption "world" which allows other species to grow back partially, thus providing resources for more people. We try to occupy this new world and then do the same thing again, resulting in oscillations in population ("popscillations") with a downward trend to a new value dependent on how much the species can bounce back before we overwhelm them again. If, with the second story, historical population and consumption trends are projected forward in time, humanity consumes some of the producers and stops when after our population drops in response to a shortage in basic resources. Then, after some settling, population and consumption both drop to much lower levels, potentially zero.

My new insight came from trying to understand that last drop, which at best seemed like radical overcompensation. After examining my underlying assumptions and being drawn back to the logic of the first story, I realized that humanity must be seeking a particular goal, manifested as reaching a limit in both population and consumption. Historical data showed that the best candidate was a condition where all that remains in the world is us, what we're consuming, and the supporter species. In short, we don't recognize the value of keeping producers around. Incorporating this into the story resulted in popscillation behavior like that in the first story: population drops in response to lack of basic resources, the species providing those resources partially recover, and the cycle starts over and over again, with an overall downward trend in our population. In this case, continuously increasing individual consumption repeatedly causes attempted overshoot of resources that drives down population in response.

As with someone who is banging his head against a wall harder and harder in the hope that it will move out of the way, avoiding further injury is best achieved by stopping the banging. If we're smarter, we'll avoid hitting the wall the first time (immediately stop population and consumption growth). Following this analogy, if the wall starts to move toward us, which is a conceivable consequence of climate change as species start to die off without our help, we should move backward (reduce our consumption) at least as fast as it is moving toward us. If we're lucky, and emphasize reduction of our greenhouse gas waste, the "wall" may slow down or stop before we are forced to reduce our population.

Shutdown Time

With evidence continuing to mount that our ability to survive on this planet depends on stopping the burning of fossil fuels as soon as possible, it's time to start holding all governments and corporations responsible for the planning and implementation of a swift and safe reduction of the global ecological footprint to no more than half what it was in 2013, beginning with the total elimination of operations involving the use of fossil fuels. In short, it is now time for what I referred to in an earlier blog post as a "graceful shutdown" and bringing safe alternatives online that provide the basic physical and social needs of everyone alive today.

Reducing our footprint involves both lowering our consumption of ecological resources and rendering harmless the pollution we've dumped into places that harm the world's ecosystems, including the atmosphere. We also need to secure or render harmless substances like nuclear fuel that could potentially become harmful pollution.

Individuals and communities can do some of this on their own, perhaps best by using the concepts and techniques collectively known as "permaculture" and explored in test cases by the international Transition movement. By changing what they buy, who they vote for, and who they work for, as well as advocating for shutdown by the organizations they are part of, people can have a considerable impact on the probability of success.

Much of my recent writing has been devoted to exploring how long it takes to perform tasks, as well as the complexity of events and activities. This may have seemed tangential to my main focus of studying our potential future and how to avoid its negative trajectories. In fact, I have been using this immediately practical knowledge to start laying groundwork for how to plan humanity's next moves (and personally determine how I can maximize my contribution to creating a healthier world). Understanding learning curves helps us as individuals to judge the honesty and competence of organizations who we support or might potentially support, as well as the quality of what we do and what we get from others based on complexity. More than this, we have a useful tool for deciding between alternative actions that could get us to a goal or set of goals. My discussions of values, competition, and cooperation were intended to explore another, critical dimension to making plans: that of amplifying collective effort to accelerate progress instead of reduce it – or worse.

I spent a lot of time determining the likely trajectories of population and consumption, largely to assess the large-scale context for making responsible decisions. I focused particularly on the timing of the crisis revealed by the variables I analyzed, which has closely followed the projections made by many real experts in the social and environmental sciences and therefore gives me more confidence in what they are saying. It seems that no matter what angle is used for examining our immediate future, the conclusions are the same, and they are at odds with the technologically and economically optimistic orientation of most businesses I have studied in my attempt to meet personal financial responsibilities in the short term. From within a socio-economic system fixated on eternal growth in physical consumption and consolidation of power, the very concept of voluntary shutdown is akin to the worst form of heresy in the most conservative of religions, and I understand the potential costs of even suggesting it; yet the costs of not doing so and going further are likely to be much, much higher.

In future writing, I intend to explore what shutdown plans might need to include, and what they may look like in some detail. I also expect to discuss what "holding responsible" means, especially as means of assessing the legitimacy of organizations and their operating principles.

Evaluating Competition

It seems that here in the United States we compete for everything. This is certainly the case with politics (managing government) and business (managing the economy), which arguably have the the largest direct impact on our lives. Most of us are effectively slaves to the economy, where we must constantly convince someone that we are better than other people in order to survive. Lost in this competition are answers to some fundamental questions:

1. What are we ultimately competing for?
2. Are the winners really "better" than those they defeat?
3. Is the competition worth the cost?

Biologists would say that most competition can be best understood in evolutionary terms, as a selection of mates whose offspring have the best chance of surviving long enough to have offspring. In this case, the net result of the competition defines its goal: extending the collective lifetime of our species as long as possible. The term "better" is more than just a verdict of who wins a particular competition; it is a value judgment, assessing who supports a particular value more than others. If the value is "human life," then the better people are those who do the most to maximize the amount of human life over time. The cost of the competition must be weighed against the results to determine if the competition is worth it, which involves an additional value judgment used to identify what constitutes a "cost." We can most simply use the same value (or values) for both costs and benefits; for example, assessing whether the rules and conditions of a competition will lead to a net increase or decrease in human life over most potential outcomes.

From the perspective of an individual person or organization of people, the primary value is personal happiness, which is intimately tied to longevity, physical consumption, and the assistance of related individuals. Individuals can choose to collaborate or compete, a choice that is determined by both personal predilection (some of us are more prone to compete than collaborate) and the availability of resources (when resources fall below a threshold where everyone can meet their needs and wants, people will be forced to compete with the others to get what they need and want, unless collaboration can increase the amount of resources).

Artificial competitions, such as those between businesses, manipulate these variables by imposing goals, rules, and conditions, and often selecting participants with particular inclinations and abilities, with the effect of (at least temporarily) increasing happiness for those who win and those who support the competitions with resources. Little, if any, consideration may be given to the net gain or loss to anyone or anything else because the values embodied in a competition do not extend to them, unless additional values are imposed by an outside entity which acts on their behalf, or are inherently shared by the competition's participants who are part of an impacted group.

Political competition is perhaps the most critical of artificial competitions, because it determines the leadership of government, whose influence is derived from its function to enforce and support values common to a society, especially the the lives of its citizens, by for example acting as the "outside entity" influencing other competitions. For societies such as ours that have global impact through artificial (abstract and technology-driven) means, the natural large-scale value of human life should be explicitly discussed and accepted or rejected by all citizens on a routine basis; and, if accepted, it must be intentionally integrated into the values that underlie all activities contributing to that impact, especially the governance of our society and how we choose our leaders.

Due to the world's complexity and global proximity to natural resource limits, those of us with significant influence can no longer follow our natural proclivity to increase our happiness, with its attendant and excessive consumption requirements. Humanity has arguably passed the point where significant additional resources are available, and some of us are already using technology and wealth to manipulate institutions like government and business, which enabled our growth, to facilitate the opposite: competition (with unfair advantage) for what is already being used by the rest. Together we need to reexamine the competitions we are participating in, and consciously decide whether the values they serve are in line with the future we want, before that future is decided for us.

Science and Commons

In the book "Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America" (which I reviewed on Goodreads.com), Sean Lawrence Otto describes how the U.S. is facing a major crisis brought on by its growing unwillingness to embrace the freedom of inquiry into objective reality, a basic prerequisite for science and democracy, and the use of its results to inform and ground discussions of public policy. With politicians and citizens alike increasingly unable to discern opinion from fact on a range of issues (not the least of which being greenhouse gas-induced climate change), our access to vast technological and economic power coupled with near-ideological pursuit of the tragedy of the commons on a global scale has made the U.S. a (if not the) key player in an unfolding disaster that may doom most of life on Earth.

Otto argues that the best way to deal with this is for scientists to actively promote awareness of the process of science, which would add credibility to the knowledge it produces and make it more meaningful and useful to the majority of citizens. I have no doubt that this is true: it was the basis of much of my work with my father on attempting to transform math and science education in the 1980s. If you can enable people to observe and respect objective reality, understand how it works, and appreciate the value of testing their most basic assumptions, then you are empowering them to achieve their maximum happiness without compromising the ability of others to do the same.

The role of government as protector of the commons is explored in the book, as a means to prevent the tyranny of the few, with the power to consume more, over the many who either cannot consume as much (or choose not to out of respect for others). I look at it as the equivalent of preserving enough resources for everyone to meet their basic needs, and enabling them to do so, with the remainder as open to basic market competition subject to personal ability and effort. Critical to this is the universal availability of knowledge about what people's needs are, what it takes to meet them, and what variables in nature and human behavior may change these; science is a valuable tool for providing this, and therefore should be nurtured.

In my own work, I've tried to be careful about identifying what is conjecture and what is fact. However, much of what I write, this entry included, is a mixture of both which I don't pretend is strict science, but rather a collection of ideas that can be used to spur further investigation into the areas I've explored. The freedom to hypothesize, to play with ideas, is as important as the freedom to test one's beliefs and identify how the Universe really works, but we must exercise both in order to create something truly worthwhile. If you're familiar with complex mathematics, I see it as the equivalent of operating on imaginary space to derive an object or relationship in real space that can actually be observed. Just as entertainment provides pretend experiences that can inform how we live our lives, we still have to live our lives and be able to understand the difference. This is a facility we appear to be in the process of losing, a process which must be reversed if we, and those who depend on us, are to survive and thrive.

Peak Economy

In a recent comment about the 99% Movement (a.k.a. Occupy Wall Street), I introduced what I think is a fundamental problem with our economy. We have demonstrated a willingness and ability to assign arbitrary economic value to configurations of matter and energy as well as non-physical (virtual) things such as intellectual property and debt. The most “successful” people in our economy – those who can effectively consume whatever they want – are best at manipulating the value, manifested as demand, for the things (whether physical or virtual) whose supply they control. The ability to exchange virtual things of arbitrary value for physical commodities that are inherently limited, either in supply or access to them, poses the threat of potentially exhausting the physical commodities, leaving virtual ones which cannot by themselves contribute to people's basic survival.

For much of the last 50 years, Gross World Product (GWP), a measure of world economic activity, has grown faster than the world's consumption of ecological resources (total ecological footprint). GWP is now about 1.8 times what it was in 1980, when humanity was consuming as much ecological resources as the Earth could provide on a renewable basis, while consumption is nearly 1.6 times its 1980 value (population is 1.5). When we were consuming all of the “production” of the natural world, the value of the economy presumably embodied all of that consumption; simplistically, the GWP was equal to its value. GWP tracks with consumption in a predictable way, suggesting that the difference since then is due to value added to the resources we consume, that is, the creation of virtual commodities.

Generally, both GWP and consumption have been slowing down (consumption since 1960, GWP since 1989), yet the annual rate of GWP growth has fluctuated wildly, likely in response to the movement of virtual wealth. The recent fluctuations in the GWP growth rate are not unusually large, but they are unusual in that they've briefly gone negative, causing major economic and social upheaval, due mainly to how far from peak growth we have gotten.

If my projections are accurate, the average rate will continue steadily, inexorably, downward, though there may be more fluctuations. GWP, along with consumption and population, will reach a maximum (zero growth) by 2029, when consumption approaches the habitability limit, and take another 42 years to drop to zero. At the peak, GWP will be about 3.7 times its value in 1980, about twice what it would have been if it had kept pace with consumption and consumption reached the habitability limit. Put another way: The world economy will reach its maximum when the value of virtual commodities is the same as the value of physical commodities, where our consumption is at the limit where the remaining other species can just keep the planet habitable and survive.

Using virtual wealth to purchase all the physical wealth would be at least theoretically possible at the peak. Since virtual wealth declines after the peak, it's conceivable that such a possibility may be acted upon, driving the population down in the process as more and more people can't meet their physical needs from this and the resulting competition. Needless to say, this is a future we want to avoid.

In the commentary that introduced this concern, I suggested that we could begin dealing with it by more closely matching our economy to physical constraints. This is not a new idea; ecologically-minded economists have been making the case for a long time that we should account for the value of products and services that other species provide, viewing our economy as part of a larger system that includes the rest of Nature. I'm taking a bit of a short cut by assigning economic value to the ecological footprint (again, the basis of my “consumption” numbers). I'm also suggesting that we at least decouple virtual wealth from physical wealth (consumption) enough that people can retain enough physical wealth to survive and maintain a functioning society while keeping the overall amount low enough so we never get too close to the habitability limit.

Perhaps we could start by limiting the GWP to a value between what it was in 1980 and what it was at peak growth, in 1989 (27.2T to 39.9T in 2009 U.S. dollars). We would need to reshape the way we live so that everyone could meet their basic needs on 54% to 68% of the average current per capita economic activity, and preferably less than half. As unrealistic as this appears, it at least frames the scale of the problem we need to solve, and the sooner we can start figuring out how to do so with the minimum hardship, the better.

The View from Home

Sometimes, it helps your thinking to just look around where you live. For all my study of ecology and culture, I have to admit a fair amount of ignorance about my local environment outside of the usual range of knowledge most of us have. For example, I didn't know until very recently the species of trees on one of the routes I frequently walk (the dominant ones, currently with leaves, are Blue Spruce, Western Larch, and Ponderosa Pine). Of course, knowing the name of something is mainly good for communicating with other people about it, sharing what you each know and perhaps taking action based on that shared knowledge. I have a number of books (not to mention access to the Internet) which can provide a lot more information, including the books I've used for identification.

I've spent a lot of time studying and thinking about the similarities and differences between what I call the natural world and the artificial world, and how the two interact. My focus has been mainly on how what we do with them is healthy or not, contributing to our survival or ensuring our demise (there is, of course, a lot more to care about; but given the currently high probability of our demise, I feel justified in my preoccupation). In the urban area where I live (metropolitan Denver), the natural world is clearly at a disadvantage: trees, shrubs, and grasses are planted, pruned, and watered wherever people deem they can be, and wildlife is tolerated wherever it isn't perceived as a threat to the way people think their environment should be. My state has done a fair job of protecting wild areas both inside and outside of settled regions, but even there you can see that plants and wildlife have clear limitations imposed on them by the artificial world, a part of which we all carry with us.

The recent disaster in Japan was a horrific reminder of how the the two worlds can seriously harm each other, and how that harm can potentially spread to every neighborhood due to the global reach of the artificial world and the huge influence it has over the natural world. My neighborhood has already seen extreme weather due to the climate changes caused by industrial activity all over the planet. The vacancies at local malls are part of the devastation caused by marauding Wall Street traders and irresponsible bankers who live many hundreds of miles away, and hint at more systemic problems. For a beginner naturalist like me, it's going to be tough learning what's normal for my area before it all changes, but at least I'll understand the changes better in the process.

Imagining the Future: Economics

In an ideal world, any economy would:

• Limit consumption (the rate of use of resources) to amounts and types of renewable resources that do not contribute to species extinctions.
• Maximize the value embodied in what is consumed.
• Ensure that everyone has access to the minimum amount of resources required to maintain a functioning society (meet basic physical needs and assure basic freedoms; see “Imagining the Future: Meeting Needs”).

To do this,

• Part of the biosphere (the “critical area”) would be permanently conserved to sustain basic planetary functionality, including use by other species.
• Another part of the biosphere (the “needs area”) would be maintained for use by people to meet basic needs.
• The remainder (the “wealth area”) would be available for meeting people's wants.

When people can't meet their needs with available resources, they must either move or trade with people in an area with an excess of resources that can meet their needs. What they trade for the excess must be renewable or reusable (as well as the resources used to make the trade); if this is not possible, then they must move to where it is possible, or where the excess resources exist.

To ensure that the wealth area doesn't infringe on the other areas, the cost of each transaction would be proportional to its ecological footprint, with the total “money” in this “wealth economy” fixed and proportional to the total ecological footprint of the wealth area.