We assume that everything's becoming more efficient, and in an immediate sense that's true our lives are better in many ways. But that improvement has been gained through a massively inefficient use of natural resources.
We are now heading down a centuries-long path toward increasing the productivity of our natural capital - the resource systems upon which we depend to live - instead of our human capital.
I think an old style of addressing environmental problems is ebbing, but the rise of the so-called conservative, political movement in this country is not a trend towards the future but a reaction to this very broad shift that we are undergoing.
People are naming it the Third Wave, the Information Age, etc. But I would say those are basically technological descriptions, and this next shift is not about technology - although obviously it will be influenced and in some cases expressed by technologies.
We can no longer prosper by increasing human productivity. The more we try to do, the more poverty we will create.
The first rule of sustainability is to align with natural forces, or at least not try to defy them.
There is no cost difference between incarceration and an Ivy League education; the main difference is curriculum.