Our World

The talk from politicians of all persuasions is of winning global races, of growth, expansion. Looking at the planet as a whole I can see no resources coming from anywhere else. Not at present. I look at a house plant. This survives only through outside intervention. Through our helping it out by watering it, changing its soil once the nutrients have been used up. Here, on earth, there is no extra outside source of water and nutrients for our little system. Endless growth is not the possibility we are led to believe. A man born in 1970 uses several times the mineral resources of a man born in 1940 during his life time. A boy born today to the power of ten again. It took us 200,000 years to reach a billion people alive on earth. We have added that many again since the year 2000. There are two possible paths. Either we reign in our breeding or face the consequences. Science and technology constantly bring fresh methods and there is no doubt there are better, less resource heavy ways to live. But that is not going to be sufficient. And people are greedy. Inequality is going to bring us down. In 1978 a typical US worker made $ 48000 a year, ( adjusted for inflation). At the same time the average annual wage of a top 1% er was $390000. By 2010 the median wage was down to $33000 but at the top it had trebled to $1,100,000. There isn't enough free money in the middle class pocket to keep capitalism turning. This how it is. There may well be no end to this recession. It is crunch time. The economy is not outside human control, not like the weather. We could do something about this.