Another forest in the Atlanta area has been clearcut. Hurray! Now we can grow our economy, make rich people richer, and create more traffic when the development goes up.
Somewhere in one of those dark skyscrapers in Atlanta, a red-nosed economist is pulling a whiskey bottle out of his bottom desk drawer and taking another swig. He's staring at a computer screen as he writes his latest economic forecast. "We've got to have growth," he says in a slurred voice. "We have to keep the economy growing. The world is infinite, it is the size of the sun, and the United States can hold millions and billions more people! Who cares about the forests we desecrate, the species we drive to extinction, and the impact our development has on weather." So he continues writing his rosey economic report.
The next day his report is all over the news, and the Republicans are screaming, "See, the economy is growing because we cut taxes," and the Democrats are screaming, "The data is flawed, that economist was DRUNK last night."
But John and Jane Doe really don't care either way. They have always lived with growth, they have learned to accept and adapt. Perpetual growth is JUST THE WAY IT IS and there is nothing that can stop it.
A big corporate head is at the end of the boardroom table in a darkened room. Every once in a while the rising smoke from his cigar glimmers in the one lit light. "Dwiggins, BRING ME THAT ECONOMIC REPORT, and give me a milkshake from Steak-n-Shake while you're at it." A lone, tall, skinny man with horn-rimmed glasses scurries about at the far end of the room, and there's a sound of ruffling papers.
"Well, ladies and gentlemen. We CAN BUILD this mall, and we can hire cheap foreign labor to build it and staff it. That will allow maximum profits for us, so that I can expand my house in Boca Raton."
It is not all their fault because eternal growth is all they know. The lake, the old fishing hole, is all gone. A little boy looks at the acres of scorched earth and asks his father, "Where will the animals go?"
The father looks down and says, "The animals will find another place to live, and Saddam is stockpiling weapons of mass destruction."
"Oh," says the little boy. But the father is lying. The little greenspace left west of Atlanta is crisscrossed and fragmented—not much of an ecosystem can survive around here.
From today's Atlanta-Journal Constitution:
"Metro Atlanta's population boom keeps booming along—adding about 320 people a day since 2000—with the fastest growth among Hispanics and Asians. The 20-county metro area's population increased by 9 percent between 2000 and 2003 and now is about 4.4 million, according to estimates released Thursday by the Census Bureau."
Globally, the Planet's population is 6.3 billion and rising rapidly and we are losing an estimated 200 species a day*. A lot of these species play essential roles in our ecosystem. We really have no idea what we're screwing up. It's just that all we know is growth, so we keep on doing it, at the expense of everything else. Read a book on Easter Island, and you'll learn that we REALLY CAN destroy our world.
We humans are running out of time. We have to reinvent from the ground up our morals and ethical systems. We need to redefine just how much "stuff" a person needs to be happy. We need to weigh in the future and environment every time we make a decision. We need to stop making cars our false idols. We spend trillions providing them with black nature trails and massive seas of asphalt. They are the real God of our sick society, and this is wrong.
If we don't change our ways, one day humans will be on the list of "Species Lost Today" and Mother Nature won't care one bit.
My inspiration for today: Friends of Ishmael Society .
*This is just an estimate. Since many species are being destroyed before they are even discovered, this is a tough guess. However, the famous Harvard scientist Edwin O. Wilson puts it another way by saying, "Current species loss due to human intervention is probably 1,000 to 10,000 times greater than what would occur naturally."
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